Last July, in the wake of the killing of George Floyd and the subsequent Black Lives Matter protests that erupted across the country, the then-president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn., Lorenzo Soria, brought a motion to the membership to vote on hiring a diversity consultant. He recommended Pam Jackson, a former vice president of international distribution publicity at 20th Century Fox.
“It’s not that the association has committed any crime or that we are doing things totally wrong,” said Soria, according to a recording of the discussion obtained by The Times. “We were thinking of this because of the times we’re living [in] and because there is always something that I think we can all learn that again we may not be aware of.”
Soria, who died in August, pointed out during the meeting that the HFPA didn’t have any Black members and hadn’t for many years. “I believe that the association will benefit. … I believe that nowadays it is also good for the association to have this kind of figure working on our behalf,” he said in the recording.
HFPA members ultimately voted against bringing Jackson on board, with some members saying they wanted to review other candidates.
Read the full story at LATimes.com.