Film Academy CEO Bill Kramer on 2025 Oscars, Karla Sofía Gascón, AI and Trump’s DEI Crackdown
Bill Kramer, the guest on this episode of The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast, has, since 2022, been the CEO of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organization best known for handing out Oscars. In that capacity, he oversees some 700 employees spread between Los Angeles, New York and London, and all Academy operations, including the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, the Margaret Herrick Library, the Academy Film Archive and the Academy Awards — the 97th edition of which will take place on Sunday.
Over the course of a conversation this week in the sixth floor C-suite of the Academy’s Beverly Hills headquarters, the 56-year-old reflected on his unlikely journey from the Baltimore area to the center of Hollywood; how his education and early career experience prepared him to become, in 2019, the director of the Academy Museum, and in 2022, the CEO of the entire Academy; what we can expect from this year’s Oscars telecast; and longer-term questions about the Academy.
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Below are excerpts of Kramer’s remarks on a variety of hot-button topics.
On Jimmy Kimmel not returning as Oscars host and Conan O’Brien taking the gig for the first time…
Working with Jimmy was so fantastic, and Jimmy and Molly, who’s his wife, but also a producer on her own — they’re family. They were so great to work with. We love them. They really brought the show back. We had a couple of years that perhaps were a little challenging. And then, when I became CEO and Janet [Yang] became president, we really made it our mission to return the show to something that we can all be proud of. I think our industry needs it. We need it. We need to celebrate our work and our artists. So Jimmy was remarkable to work with. I don’t know if he planned to do the show forever, but we’re always talking to Jimmy and Molly. Conan is, I think, a perfect host for the show, especially for today: he’s apolitical, he brings joy, he is beloved by the comedy community, and he has a whole new legion of fans because of his podcast. When we announced Conan, our social channels blew up with people saying, “I’ve never watched the show before. I’m going to tune in now.” So, I think Conan brings with him a brand new audience.
On the controversy surrounding Emilia Pérez best actress Oscar nominee Karla Sofía Gascón…
The Academy does not condone hate speech — I want to be very clear about that. Karla’s nomination is historic. That’s really important. She’s still a nominee. We honor that, but we do not condone hate speech. All nominees are invited to attend the show. That stands. If Karla joins us for the night [as THR has confirmed she intends to do], I hope there is an air of respect. We have over 200 nominees. The night is about much more than one person. We are there to celebrate all of our nominees.
On best original song Oscar nominees not being performed on the telecast (in lieu of highlighting the nominated songwriters) and non-nominated songs, at least one performed by the stars of Wicked, being showcased instead…
Oftentimes with the original songs, you see the performer, but you know nothing about the songwriter who is nominated, so we wanted to use this moment to talk about the songwriters. We’ve been planning this for a long time. As weaved into this theme of collaboration, we wanted to give the songwriters their moment. There will be performances on the show. These are moments that we’ve been planning and programming for since last summer. So one of the things that this allows us to do is celebrate our songwriters — I think that’s key, and I don’t want that lost in this, truly — and of course, components of those songs will be heard on the show, the original song nominees; but we also wanted to own the show in a different way and really start planning some big moments that were tied to performances, because you don’t know who’s going to be nominated until six, seven weeks before the show. We wanted more time to plan some big performances.
On how the Oscars will address the recent L.A. wildfires and the first responders who took them on…
The theme of the show is really collaboration and community. We brought Raj [Kapoor] and Katy [Mullan] back as producers of the show in May, so we’ve been working with Raj and Katie and Hamish [Hamilton], as director, for many months. We began thinking about the show literally weeks after last year’s show, and this theme of community and connectivity and collaboration has been with us from the beginning. Filmmaking is a collaborative art form, so this really allows us to weave in stories throughout the show about the nature of movie making and collaboration, and what some of the behind-the-camera disciplines do to bring us the films that we love. And by the way, that’s part of what the Academy is all about. But obviously, we have to do this in a way that is appropriate for a television show. So, we’ve been thinking about this from the beginning. The part of the show that will deal with the recent fires in the Los Angeles area is really about community, a love of home and a love of L.A. as a place for movie making and creative visionaries. So it nicely weaves into this theme of community and collaboration.
On the approaching end of the Academy’s current Oscars broadcasting deal with ABC, which expires after the 2028 Oscars telecast…
We have four more shows left with Disney, and by Disney, I mean ABC, Hulu and Buena Vista International. We’re in over 200 markets around the world. We have a great partnership with them. So, four more shows, including the one that’s coming up. Any new deal we have for the Oscars needs to be a global deal. I definitely think streaming will be a huge part of that deal. We’re talking about 2029 and beyond, and look at how much things have changed just in the last couple of years. So any deal that we arrive at — and there are many partners that could be possible — will be a global deal that has a streaming component. That is my desire, and I think that’s what would be best for the Academy. We’re having conversations [already with ABC].
On whether the Academy can indefinitely continue to present 23 awards on the telecast — or perhaps even more, given that a casting Oscar will begin being presented in some form in 2026, and a stunt work Oscar may soon follow…
The Academy is a membership organization across all disciplines. That’s who we are as an organization. And yes, we’re constantly thinking about how the show can honor the disciplines of movie making in a way that’s right for a TV audience today. Things are evolving. I’m really proud that last year we were able to have all awards on the show, and come in under three hours and 30 minutes, and win several Emmys. There’s a way to do it. That doesn’t mean that, as we evolve this show as streaming becomes a bigger part of our television show, that things may not look differently well into the future. But right now, I think, especially because we have great producers — Raj and Katie are remarkable creative producers — there’s a way to continue to do it where we don’t go backwards, but we have an entertaining show that people really want to watch.
On how the Academy, which currently requires films to meet certain inclusion standards in order to be eligible for best picture, is reacting to the Trump administration’s crackdown on DEI initiatives…
Our commitment to equity, inclusion, diversity, sustainability and accessibility is embedded throughout all of our programs; how we collect with our Academy Collections; how we curate and program our Museum; and how we work with our membership to invite new members to join the Academy. I think you’re seeing it in how our members watch and vote as part of the Oscars. It’s how we build our staff. It’s who we are as an organization. We receive very little money from the federal government, which I used to bemoan. No longer. So, we have no plans to change any of that. It’s a part of who we are as an organization. And I think what’s really important to think about is, we’re becoming a more global organization. Inherent in that is becoming more diverse.
On how the Academy is tackling questions related to artificial intelligence…
First, I want to say that A.I. is a tool, and we need to be very careful to not dictate what tools our creatives use to make their art. We are starting to have discussions, and we’re encouraging our branches to have discussions, around A.I., because we all know this is a tool that’s not going away. There are many disciplines that have been using A.I. for years; we’re just now talking about it in a different way. So, I think you’ll see deeper conversations around A.I. across all branches of the Academy. In all of this, we want to center humans and the work of humans and artists. And where that line is drawn, I think, will be a discipline-by-discipline conversation. Different branches of the Academy have different relationships with A.I. as a tool, but those conversations are happening and they’ve been fantastic, very robust. We have a Sci-Tech Council that’s helping to create a framework for this discussion, which I think is really needed.
On the prospect of the Academy walking away from its longstanding acting categories to adopt genderless lead and supporting categories of the sort already employed by the Gotham and Spirit awards…
There are no plans to do so. However, we’re always in conversation with our actors branch and our Awards Committee about this specific topic. But we are not making any changes around that anytime soon.
On concerns raised by some that the Academy’s recent layoffs of two percent of its workforce — entirely impacting people who worked in areas related to scholarship and preservation — indicates a shift away from focusing on those areas…
They’re wrong. We’ve created a new role for Matt Severson, who is a long time employee of the library. He’s amazing. No one is more committed to our Academy Collections than Matt. Prior to this new role, our archive was fairly siloed in its decision-making and how it collected; our library was fairly siloed; and within the library, departments were fairly siloed around how we were collecting what we were collecting. And then our museum was a part of this too — the museum had its own collecting department. Under Matt, all of those teams have come together. This was to create a much clearer path for collecting. Some redundancies were realized, and we made some changes. But in no way are we backing away from our commitment to preserving film history. We’re not backing down from rigorous scholarship. And those 16 people included museum employees, library employees and archival employees, so this was across departments. This is a world that is about preservation of the past. I want to be very respectful of that. Change can be challenging, but in no way is this diminishing our commitment to that work. It really was a strategic move and frankly, one that was long overdue.
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