Each Oscar season, I speak to Academy members about their voting preferences: Whom and what they like and, most importantly, why. This year, as the #OscarsSoWhite controversy has put the Academy's choices under a global microscope, some of those voters are a bit defensive. Below is an edited transcript of a conversation I had with a longtime voter in the 458-member executives branch who is not associated with any of this year's nominees. "I thought Idris Elba was brilliant in Beasts of No Nation," this voter volunteered before I could bring up the diversity question. "But whom would I have knocked off to make room for him, if I could even vote [to nominate] in the acting categories? I liked all of the performances that were nominated. Maybe we need to expand the size of the acting categories — who knows? What I do know is that the Academy mishandled the response. They should not have responded defensively. They've got to accept the vote of the people they approved as members. I'm sorry, but you cannot change the rules after the game has already begun just because you're unhappy with the results. That's what children do." (The Academy's efforts to diversify membership had been in the works before the nominations and did not impact this year's voting.)
