SINCE TAKING OVER AS CEO OF THE Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences last July, Bill Kramer has been putting out fires. The Academy is still dealing with the fallout of Will Smith’s slapping Oscars host Chris Rock. And in January, a celebrity-backed campaign that some accused of violating Academy rules powered Andrea Riseborough to a surprise Best Actress nomination for her performance in the little-seen To Leslie, boxing out two Black actors who had been considered contenders, Viola Davis and Danielle Deadwyler. The Academy launched an investigation but decided not to rescind Riseborough’s nomination. Kramer spoke to TIME about the controversies and adding a “crisis team” for the big night.
Academy President Janet Yang recently said that the response to the slap was inadequate. What would an adequate response have looked like? Let’s hope something like this never happens again—but we could have moved more quickly. And I’m not just talking about the night of the show. This is really our response after the show, and how we spoke about it, and how we talked to Will and Chris, and our members.
Are there any measures being put in place this year for surprises? We have a whole crisis team, something we’ve never had before. We’ve run many scenarios. So it is our hope that we will be prepared for anything that we may not anticipate right now.
I can’t conceive what coming up with scenarios looks like. Because of last year, we’ve opened our minds to the many things that can happen. But these crisis plans—the crisis communication teams and structures we have in place—allow us to say this is the group that we have to gather very quickly. Obviously depending on the specifics of the crisis, and let’s hope something doesn’t happen and we never have to use these, but we already have frameworks in place that we can modify.
You recently issued a statement about Andrea Riseborough. Do you expect similar social-media-fueled campaigns to spring up next year?
I think social media is a space where,
