In an interview published Monday, vocal anti-Trump actor and producer Seth Rogen said he is actively working to create fewer projects that star white people, responding to a question concerning the apparent lack of racial diversity in Hollywood.
“One of the biggest conversations of the last couple years, at least in Hollywood, has been around inclusion riders and the general efforts to bring more diversity to the movies we see, both behind and in front of the camera,” Entrainment Weekly said to Rogen. “As a famous white guy in the industry, what do you feel like your role in that can be?”
“I mean, personally, I think I am just actively trying to make less things starring white people,” Rogen answered. “And if I’m succeeding or I’m not, I’m very much looking to have a far more diverse group of writers and directors and actors that we generally work with, because that group is not incredibly diverse, you know?”
“So that’s how I’ve been trying to deal with it, is just to actively take as they would say, anti-racist measures to assure that some work is [being] done to acknowledge that Black people are very marginalized in American society,” the “Knocked Up” star added.
As noted by The Daily Wire, actress Jenny Slate announced in June that she would be stepping down from her voiceover gig as a mixed-race animated cartoon character on Netflix’s “Big Mouth,” maintaining that “Black characters on an animated show should be played by Black people.”
According to Slate, it was her “white privilege” that helped her obtain the role in the first place. And while she initially thought taking the role was okay, since the animated charter has a Jewish mother, and Slate is Jewish, she ultimately decided to step down so a person of color could take the job.
Actress Kristen Bell also stepped aside from her role voicing a non-white character named Molly on the animated show “Central Park.”
“She apologized for her ‘lack of awareness’ of her ‘pervasive privilege,’ and admitted that ‘casting a mixed race character with a white actress undermines the specificity of the mixed race and Black American experience,'” outlined Matt Walsh in an op-ed for The Daily Wire.
During the Entertainment Weekly interview, Rogen was also asked about the legalization of weed with the U.S.
“I’m happy, but it’s not over at all,” he said. “If anything right now it’s in a worse place, because it’s completely legal for some people and completely illegal in other places for other people, and it’s almost at the most hypocritical point it’s ever been in America right now.”
“Like when the full-on war on drugs was happening, at least they were fully entrenched in their own bulls***, you know? But now there’s this acknowledgment that it’s not bad and it’s good business and that it reduces crime when it’s legal, but they still are putting a lot of not-white people in jail for it in a lot of states,” he continued.
“So on one hand [the government] acknowledges that it’s fine, and on the other hand people are having their lives ruined. It’s nice in general to see the acknowledgement that it’s not some horrible drug, though my attitude toward it has been the same,” Rogen added. “Nor did I ever feel any shame about it or any of the stigma associated with it, so I personally don’t feel that different.”
The actor made headlines back in June when he, along with other celebrities, donated to the Minnesota Freedom Fund (MFF) to help bail out rioters in Minneapolis following the death of George Floyd.
Other celebrities like Steve Carell, Janelle Monae, Ben Schwartz, and Don Cheadle also chipped in $1,000 to the MFF.
Matched. https://t.co/qhwGUtrywc
— Seth Rogen (@Sethrogen) May 28, 2020
Related: Seth Rogen: ‘I Was Fed A Huge Amount Of Lies About Israel’