Mahershala Ali tells Black actors not to chase Academy validation on ‘7PM in Brooklyn’

Mahershala Ali says debate over whether Black Oscar winners are A-list “doesn’t translate to anything real,” urging actors to focus on great material.

Mahershala Ali has two Oscars on his shelf. He still doesn’t think Black actors should measure themselves by them.

The actor appeared on the Nov. 13 episode of “7PM in Brooklyn with Carmelo Anthony,” where co-host Kazeem “Kaz” Famuyide raised a familiar question, does winning an Academy Award make a Black actor A-list? Complex reported that Ali dismissed the premise almost immediately.

“It’s kind of just talk. It doesn’t translate to anything real,” Ali said. He compared the argument to the endless barbershop debate over LeBron James versus Michael Jordan, a question he suggested matters far less than the obvious point that both are great.

Ali speaks from rare experience. He won Best Supporting Actor for “Moonlight” in 2017 and won the same category again two years later for “Green Book.” Still, he argued that an Oscar means something different for each generation. The industry Sidney Poitier navigated when he won, he said, is not the same one Halle Berry or Viola Davis faced, and a trophy alone does not settle a career’s trajectory.

His larger concern was the climate behind the camera. Ali said recent political shifts have trickled into hiring practices, with DEI now treated as “this bad word.” That environment, he argued, has removed whatever healthy pressure studios once felt to greenlight projects that could be perceived as diverse.

His solution was not to lean into that label. Black actors, Ali said, don’t want to be folded into a “diversity project.” They want to do great material.

The comments carry extra weight given his own history with major studios. In 2019, Marvel announced Ali would lead a new version of “Blade,” but the project fell apart before reaching the screen.

The more recent cancellation of Marvel’s “Wonder Man” has added to fan speculation that Black-led films and series are being quietly deprioritized, a question the studio has not directly addressed.

Ali has since found his footing elsewhere. He reunited with Bassam Tariq, the filmmaker originally hired to direct “Blade,” on “Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother,” which was released in September.

His message for younger actors was simple, the work matters more than the hardware. In an industry that keeps changing the rules about whose stories get made, Ali seems less interested in arguing over who has made it and more focused on choosing material that lasts.