What did Richard Dreyfuss say about The new Oscars diversity rules?

The Academy Awards’ new diversity guidelines do not sit well with actor Richard Dreyfuss.

Officials announced in 2020 that beginning in 2024, films must meet certain representation criteria in order to be considered for the Academy Award for best picture.

Films must meet at least two of four criteria, which include whether the lead actors are from underrepresented groups or if at least 30% of the cast and crew are from these groups.

Richard Dreyfuss told Margaret Hoover during an interview Friday, May 5 2023, on the PBS series “Firing Line” that such rules “make me vomit.” When Hoover asked him why, the actor said, “Because this is an art form.”

“It’s also a form of commerce and it makes money,” the actor said. “But it’s an art. And no one should be telling me as an artist that I have to give into the latest, most current idea of what morality is.”

The inclusion standards were implemented in an attempt to address industry inequality, which sparked the #OscarsSoWhite movement in 2015.

“Am I being told that I will never have a chance to play a Black man?” Dreyfuss said. “Is someone else being told that if they’re not Jewish they shouldn’t play the Merchant of Venice? Are we crazy? Do we not know that art is art?”

“I don’t think that there is a minority or a majority in this country that has to be catered to like that,” Dreyfuss went on to say during the interview.