Former Fresh Prince of Bel Air actress Janet Hubert is still going strong on her former co-star and his wife Jada Pinkett Smith, who had called for a boycott of the Oscars over the list of all-white acting nominees.
“I was looking at this ridiculousness people called a historic moment and I was annoyed,” she said in an interview with The Times. “I was annoyed because it dilutes the movement when you only stand up for yourself.
“I’m a real freedom fighter. I’m not a pretend freedom fighter. I stand up for other actresses, other people. The Smiths just irked me because they are such pretenders, and everything is a photo op,” she said, speaking of Pinkett Smith and her husband, former “Fresh Prince” star Will Smith. “It’s just self-contrived because her hubby didn’t get a nomination.”
Hubert went on to say that she was lashing out because she wanted to tell the truth about Will Smith getting her “blacklisted” — and gave deep insight into her issues with the Smith family.
You’re known for doing videos about popular culture, but they’re often in a character. You chose not to do one for this. Why?
I didn’t want to do a character because I wanted this to be me. I wanted to speak from my heart about how I felt because people really don’t know me. They know Vivian Banks, but they don’t know Janet Hubert. It’s the one thing I keep getting over 25 years in my struggle to take my reputation back from someone who purposefully destroyed it and would not stand up — and I’m listening to [Pinkett Smith] say, “Stand up and boycott the awards.” Nobody cares.
This is my way of letting loose what I feel inside as an actress who’s been blocked. The wonderful thing about the Internet is that nobody can stop you.
In the video, you say that the calls to boycott the Academy Awards are “not that deep.” What do you mean by that?
We are not brain surgeons. We are not curing cancer. We are not finding the next cure for Alzheimer’s. We are simply and merely entertainment. We take on and wear the masks of characters. That’s what we’re paid to do. Someone like Will Smith has not come up through the ranks like most actors, so for him to be complaining the most is the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen.
So you’re not saying diversity in Hollywood isn’t an issue?
We’re all complaining about diversity in Hollywood, but we’ve got to address the colorism within the black community of Hollywood first. I’m called “dark-skinned Aunt Viv.” [Reid] is called “light-skinned Aunt Viv.” The whole ridiculousness of black Hollywood — there is no black Hollywood. It’s every man for himself. We’ve got to address that first before we can start attacking someone else’s awards that were never designed for us.
The Oscars were never designed for us. There are actors who have never gotten an Oscar and have done amazing work. If you are waiting for an award of a little … gold statue and that’s supposed to validate you, then you’re not in this business for the right reasons. We do the work. It’s about the work. It’s about taking the pages of a script and bringing them to life. It ain’t that deep. We get paid a lot of money to do very little work.
She made some really strong points — and I have a feeling this isn’t over.