Bill Kramer, a guest on this episode of the Hollywood Reporter’s Award Chat Podcast, has been CEO of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, an organization best known for handing out Oscars since 2022. In that capacity, he will oversee around 700 employees spread between Los Angeles, New York and London, as well as all academy businesses, including the Academy Museum Film Museum, the Margaret Herick Library, the Academy Film Archives and the Academy Awards.
In the course of this week’s conversation at the C-Suite on the sixth floor of the Academy’s Beverly Hills headquarters, the 56-year-old reflects on his unlikely journey from the Baltimore area to the heart of Hollywood. His education and early career experience set him up as director of the Academy Museum in 2019 and CEO of the entire Academy in 2022. What we can expect from this year’s Oscar TV broadcast. Long-term questions about the academy.
Below is an excerpt from Kramer’s remarks on various hot button topics.
Jimmy Kimmel will not return as Oscar host, Conan O’Brien is making his first gig…
His work with Jimmy is incredible, with Jimmy and Molly not only being his wife, but also her own producers. They are family. They were so great to work together. We love them. They really got the show back. There have been years that were probably a bit challenging. And when I became CEO and Janet (Yang) became president, we really made it our mission to bring the show back to something that we can all be proud of. I think that’s what we need in our industry. It is necessary. We need to celebrate our work and artists. So it was worth noting that Jimmy worked with him. I don’t know if he’s trying to do the show forever, but we’re always talking to Jimmy and Molly. I think Conan is the perfect host, especially for today’s show. He is apolitical, brings joy, is loved by the comedy community and has a whole new fan for his podcast. When we announced Conan, our social channel said, “I’ve never seen the show before. I’ll tune it now.” So I think Conan will bring him a brand new audience.
Best actress Oscar nominated Carla Sofia Gascon on the controversy over Emilia Perez…
The academy does not tolerate hate speech – I want to be very clear about it. Cara’s nomination is historic. That’s really important. She is still a candidate. We respect that, but we do not tolerate hate speech. All candidates are invited to attend the show. It’s standing. If Karla joins us at night (as THR confirmed she’s trying to do), I hope there’s an air of respect. There are over 200 candidates. There are almost multiple people at night. We are there to celebrate all the candidates.
In Best Original Song, the Oscar nominees are not performed on television (instead of highlighting the nominated songwriter), and songs that are not nominated, at least one of which is performed by the Wicked star and displayed instead…
Often, in the original songs, you see the performers, but I don’t know anything about the nominated songwriter, so I wanted to use this moment to talk about the songwriter. We have been planning this for a long time. When weaved into the theme of this collaboration, we wanted to give songwriters their moments. There is a performance at the show. These are the moments I’ve been planning and programming since last summer. So, one of the things this can do for us is to celebrate the songwriters. I think that’s important. I don’t want to be lost with this – of course, you can hear the components of those songs on the show. But we wanted to own the show in a different way. And since I don’t know who’ll be nominated six or seven weeks before the show, I really wanted to start planning some big moments that tied to the performance. I wanted more time to plan some big performances.
About how Oscar deals with the recent LA Wildfires and the first responders to adopt them…
The theme of the show is really collaboration and community. I brought Raj (Kapoor) and Katy (Mullan) as producers of the show in May, so I’ve been working with Raj and Katie and Hamish (Hamilton) as directors for months. We literally started thinking about the show a few weeks after last year’s show. This theme of community connection and collaboration was done with us from the beginning. Film production is a collaboration art form. This allows us to really weave in throughout the show about the nature of filmmaking and collaboration and what some of the behind-the-scenes disciplines do to bring the film we love. By the way, that’s a part of everything in the academy. But obviously, this should be done in a way that is appropriate for television shows. So we’ve been thinking about this from the beginning. Part of the show dealing with recent fires in the Los Angeles area is truly about the love of community, home, and LA’s love as a place of filmmaking and creative visionary. So it is well woven into this theme of community and collaboration.
The Academy’s current Oscar broadcast contract with ABC approaches the Academie’s contract with the company will expire after the 2028 Oscar TV broadcast…
Disney and four more shows remain. Disney means ABC, Hulu and Buena Vista International. We are in over 200 markets around the world. We have a great partnership with them. So there are four more shows. The new deals we have for Oscars must be global transactions. I’m sure streaming will be a big part of that deal. We’re talking about 2029 and beyond and we’re seeing how much has changed over the last few years. So the deals we have reached – and there are many possible partners – will be a global trade with a streaming component. That’s my desire and I think that’s the best thing for the academy. We’re having a conversation (already on ABC).
Whether the Academy can continue to announce 23 awards on television indefinitely, or perhaps even more, given that the casting Oscars will begin to be announced in some way in 2026, and the stunt work Oscars could soon follow…
The Academy is a membership organization in all fields. That’s who we are as an organization. And yes, we are constantly thinking about how shows can celebrate the field of filmmaking in the right way for today’s television audiences. Things are evolving. I’m really proud to win all the awards on the show last year, get in under 3 hours and 30 minutes and get some Emmys. There is a way to do that. That’s not to say that things may not look different from the future as streaming evolves as it becomes a bigger part of the TV show. But for now, I think it’s because great producers especially for us – Large and Katie are amazing creative producers.
The Academy is currently responding to the Trump administration’s crackdown on the DEI initiative for academies that require films to meet certain inclusion criteria to qualify for Best Picture…
Our commitment to equity, inclusion, diversity, sustainability and accessibility is embedded in every program. How to collect at the Academy Collection. How to curate and program a museum. And how we work with membership to invite new members to the academy. I think we see that by how our members see and vote as part of the Oscar. That’s how we build our staff. It’s who we are as an organization. We received little money from the federal government. no longer. So there is no plan to change any of them. It’s part of who we are as an organization. And I think what’s really important to think about is that we are becoming a more global organization. The inherent things are more diverse.
About how the Academy addresses questions related to artificial intelligence…
First of all, I want to say that AI is a tool, so you need to be very careful not to direct the tools creatives use to create art. We are beginning to debate and encourage branches to discuss AI. This is because we know this is an undefunct tool. There are many areas where AI has been used for years. We’re talking about it in a different way now. So I think we’ll see deeper conversations around AI at every branch of the academy. In all of this, we want to focus on the work of humans and the work of humans and artists. And I think the place where those lines are drawn will be a conversation of discipline. The different branches of the academy have different relationships with AI as tools, but those conversations took place, and they were wonderful and very robust. There is a Sci-Tech Council that will help you create a framework for this discussion. I think this is really necessary.
The outlook for the Academy to move away from the long-standing acting category, adopting genderless leads and the type of support category already adopted at the Gotham and Spirit Awards…
There is no plan to do so. But we are constantly talking to actors branches and award committees about this particular topic. But we have not changed it at any time.
The concerns raised by the Academy’s recent 2% layoffs of the workforce (which fully affects those who have worked in areas related to scholarships and preservation) indicate a departure from focusing on those areas…
They’re wrong. We created a new role for Matt Severson, a longtime library employee. He’s amazing. No one is more committed to the Academy Collection than Matt. Prior to this new role, our archives were rather silent about their decisions and how they were collected. Our library was pretty silent. Also, within the library, the department was rather silent about how we were collecting what we were collecting. And our museum was part of this too. The museum had its own collection department. Under the mat, these teams all came together. This was to create a much clearer path to collecting. Some redundancy has been achieved and some changes have been made. But we will not leave our commitment to preserving the history of films. We have not retreated from strict scholarships. And this was the whole department, as these 16 included museum employees, library employees and archive employees. This is a world about preserving the past. I want to respect that very much. Change can be challenging, but this never reduces your commitment to the job. It was a truly strategic move and, frankly, it was a long postponement.
