Comedian Bill Maher has declared it is time to move on from the Oscars' diversity complaints.
Maher, 70, addressed the tenth anniversary of the #OscarsSoWhite campaign by saying it is time to abandon the movement as its goal has been achieved.
He told his Real Time audience that Oscars attendees should wear a 'ribbon that says we won.'
'Take the win,' he said on his HBO show on Friday. 'Eight of the last ten best director prizes have been won by underrepresented groups, not to mention 60 percent of the honorary awards.
'The Oscars are no longer a long, boring show full of white people. It's a long, boring show full of all people.'
He mentioned several diverse actors who have won in recent years, including Zoe Saldaña for Emilia Pérez in 2025 and Ke Huy Quan for Everything Everywhere All at Once in 2023.
He also lamented a change to nomination rules which dictate that movies must have a certain percentage of diverse cast and crew to be eligible for Best Picture, noting that several critically acclaimed films would no longer meet the criteria.
'You couldn't make Titanic today and hope to get nominated, or Braveheart, or Amadeus. Apollo 13 was about a bunch of white people because white people have done some stuff,' Maher argued.
Maher, 70, honored the tenth anniversary of the #OscarsSoWhite campaign by saying it's time to move on as the prestigious award ceremony has become diverse
Maher brought up Ke Huy Quan, who won in 2023 for Everything Everywhere All at Once, and Zoe Saldaña, who won for Emilia Pérez in 2025
Maher also highlighted that Moonlight, a film that follows a young black man growing up in Miami, won Best Picture in 2017. It was the first LGBT+ film to win the biggest award of the night.
The next year, The Shape of Water, a fantasy movie that follows a mute woman in Baltimore, won four Oscars - including Best Picture. CODA, a film about children of deaf adults, won the biggest award in 2022, becoming the first film to win with a predominantly deaf cast.
'Not to mention Nomadland, which might be about Somalia, but no one has seen it, so it's impossible to know,' Maher joked.
'Acting Oscars have gone to Will Smith, Michelle Yeoh, Zoe Saldaña, Da'Vine Joy Randolph, Youn Yuh-jung, Regina King, Viola Davis, Ke Huy Quan, Daniel Kaluuya, and Mahershala Ali twice.
'You can’t argue with a straight face - or even a gay face - that the Academy in 2026 still overlooks minority achievement or that Hollywood is biased in favor of all white people, just Australians.'
Maher went on to insist that Academy voters aren't looking at a nominee's race when they make their selection.
'No Academy member this year filled out their ballot thinking: "Well, I didn't think Timothée Chalamet was very good, but I'll vote for him because he's white."'
Chalamet is expected to take home Best Actor this year for his role in Marty Supreme, despite being in a media firestorm for making negative comments about ballet and opera.
Maher joked that critics aren't celebrating Timothée Chalamet for his performance in Marty Supreme just because he is white
'Hollywood isn't a secret cabal of racists. It's a secret cabal of people terrified of looking like racists,' Maher said.
'And I'm just tired of no matter how much progress is made, social justice warriors feeling the need to gaslight us as if none of it had happened.'
He also criticized the Academy for changing the rules to only make films eligible for Best Picture if they were made by a diverse cast and crew.
The rules stipulate that at least 30 percent of cast and crew have to be from at least two underrepresented groups. But there are also other ways to get nominated, including having a movie's subject matter or the lead actor being from underrepresented groups, among others.
Maher brought up this year's most nominated film, Sinners, starring Michael B Jordan, which beat Titanic's record for Oscar nominations, saying it 'doesn't need affirmative action.'
'Neither did Parasite or Shape of Water,' the comedian said.
'The whole thing is so Hollywood. A room full of know-nothings who call themselves the Academy, making everyone tremble before their judgment, even though their judgment is often terrible and fails the test of time.
'Maybe the hashtag should be #OscarsSoWrong.'
He also criticized the Academy for new rules which only make films eligible for Best Picture if they they have a certain percentage of diverse cast and crew, which would have made films like Titanic ineligible
The #OscarsSoWhite campaign started with April Reign, a former lawyer-turned-editor. It started as a hashtag in 2015 in response to the lack of diversity among the Academy Award nominees.
She tweeted: 'Oscars so white they ask to touch my hair' and the hashtag took on a life of its own.
It was heavily used online in 2016 after the 20 acting nominations did not include any people of color.
