Michelle Rodriquez isn’t exactly known for her eloquence. Or shrewdness. Or keen awareness about well…anything. She does have a reputation for not biting her tongue, though. As a treasured a quality as that is for many, sometimes it’s best to roll your tongue as far back down your throat as possible in order not to sound like your mouth has the aroma or the foot you regularly stored in your mouth.
Enter Rodriquez’s recent interview with New York magazine’s Vulture in which the actress known for roles in films like Avatar, The Fast and The Furious and Girlfight applauded Nicole Kidman’s performance in The Paperboy at the expense of Black actors. The interview started off just fine with Rodriquez saying she loved the Lee Daniels film and declared to the director’s critics, “I say f-ck them because they don’t get it. He’s so good at keeping me entertained.”
Then came her problematic kudos to Kidman. Michelle gushed at her performance in The Paperboy, telling Vulture: “I f—g loved it. One of my friends said, ‘She’s going to get nominated for an Oscar for that.’ I was like, ‘Nah, man. She’s not Black!’ I laugh, but it’s also very sad. It makes me want to cry. But I really believe. You have to be trashy and Black to get nominated. You can’t just be trashy.”
This is the same woman who is just as well known for her arrest record as what’s on her IMDB page.
She must be talking about the Planet Hollywood. That or the version of Hollywood that only exists in her wickedly delusional dreams. Wherever this place is, only Michelle Rodriquez lives within its borders. Well, there appear to be a scant few others. Yes, right on cue members of accentuate the positive no matter what crowd tried to guise this as some poorly articulated quip in support of Black actors.
To quote my beloved Whitney Houston: “Hell to the no.”
That is not a remark in support of Black actors. That is a jab at them in some poorly thought out way of saying Nicole Kidman will be overlooked for an Oscar. Never mind the fact that Nicole Kidman already won an Academy Award for Best Actress in 2003 for her role in The Hours and was nominated in that same category the year before for Moulin Rouge.
I probably shouldn’t care what Michelle thinks.
After all, this is the same person who once said: “I knew nothing about the independent film industry. I didn’t know much about the industry itself. All I knew was how to watch movies, how to enjoy them, how to hate them, how not to like them.”
Obviously, she still doesn’t know much. Still, there’s something grating to the nerves about a person with that kind of platform being allowed to say something that uninformed to such a wide audience with no correction. By her own imagination, if all one has to do to win an Oscar is be Black and trashy, maybe she should get a tan and bypass her way to a Lifetime Achievement Award for the Academy.
Seriously, Michelle, you don’t have to cry about Nicole. She will be more than fine. Most White actresses of her ilk are. If there’s any reason to feel emotional, it ought to be for the clue you’re missing. Like, wasn’t it you that once said, “You know, if you ever crave knowledge, there’s always a library?”
Well, if you’re too busy to venture over to one, Ms. Rodriquez, how about you find yourself a chair and get good and comfortable while Wikipedia loads. Even that simple site can correct you’re even simpler assessment of who gets rewarded in Hollywood.
Michael Arceneaux is a Houston-bred, Howard-educated writer and blogger. You can read more of his work on his site, The Cynical Ones. Follow him on Twitter: @youngsinick
