Over the last few weeks, with the BLM movement raging throughout the world, the movie industry is coming under stronger criticism than ever over the lack of diversity in front of and behind the scenes. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier star Anthony Mackie is the latest actor to come forward to talk on the topic and in a new interview, he didn’t hold back about his disappointment with Marvel over his experiences with majority white crews across their projects.
As part of Variety’s Actors on Actors interview series, Mackie spoke with Snowpiercer‘s Daveed Diggs. In the chat, Mackie opened up about how “bothered” he’s been by every MCU movie he’s worked on having a distinct lack of people of color working behind the camera.
“When ‘The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’ comes out, I’m the lead. When ‘Snowpiercer’ comes out, you’re the lead. We have the power and the ability to ask those questions,” Mackie said. “It really bothered me that I’ve done seven Marvel movies where every producer, every director, every stunt person, every costume designer, every PA, every single person has been white.”
Notably, Black Panther was very much a production led by black creatives, from director Ryan Coogler and the cast outwards. However, this doesn’t impress Mackie much as he believes that only employing black people on the film that focuses on black characters is “more racist” than not hiring them at all.
“But then when you do ‘Black Panther,’ you have a Black director, Black producer, you have a Black costume designer, you have a Black stunt choreographer,” he noted. “And I’m like, that’s more racist than anything else. Because if you only can hire the Black people for the Black movie, are you saying they’re not good enough when you have a mostly white cast?”
Mackie concluded that, in an ideal world, the thing to do would be to “hire the best person for the job. Even if it means we’re going to get the best two women, we’re going to get the best two men.”
Marvel Studios released a statement in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement at the end of last month. The message was well-received and appreciated, but many are hoping these words will be followed up by decisive action on their future movies and TV shows.
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier had its production suspended due to the pandemic, but it’s thought that it could start up again soon. However, it’s likely that it will be hit by a delay of some kind. So far, though, Disney has refused to say whether it’ll actually end up on D+ within 2020 or not.
