Mission Impossible star Simon Pegg called for more diversity in Hollywood while lashing out at people who have criticised radical leftism in the Black Lives Matter movement, saying they should “shut the f**k up”.
In an interview with The Observer — the Sunday sister edition of the British left-wing newspaper The Guardian — Pegg joined the growing chorus of rich white Hollywood elites to pledge their support for the BLM movement.
“Anyone that’s complaining about it should just shut the fuck up because it’s time,” Pegg said.
“The film industry would be such a healthier, more interesting place if there were more voices, different stories, different experiences. It’s so dominated by one particular voice and colour of face, it just perpetuates a bland mono-voiced cultural landscape,” he claimed.
The Shaun of the Dead star said that he has been holding meetings with Cephas Williams, the founder of 56 Black Men, an organisation that seeks to increase black representation in media.
“Until black men are adequately represented in mainstream media we will not stop. We will leverage our resources, our allies and the unity between our members to help bring about this change and empower black men within the UK and Globally,” 56 Black Men state on their site.
Noting the supposed hypocrisy of calling for more diversity in Hollywood as a white male star, Pegg pre-empted any woke backlash by saying that he will use his film production company Stolen Picture to promote more people from minority groups.
“Do you know that Lost Transmissions was the first feature I’ve been in that’s directed by a woman?” he said, adding: “In 20 years of film-making! How alarming is that?”
Pegg gave the interview to promote his new film Lost Transitions, which deals with the issue schizophrenia. He said that there is still a “shame” associated with mental health issues, taking aim at President Donald Trump for promulgating the stigma.
“Trump does it all the time, refers to people as mad and crazy, because then he immediately eradicates that person’s human credibility. Which speaks to how little we value people with mental health issues in society. You’re redundant, your voice means nothing, your ideas mean nothing, you’re a reject.”
With his newfound international fame following the Mission Impossible film series, the British actor has increasingly entered into the political fray.
In January he joined a group of wealthy leftists, Millionaires Against Pitchforks, in calling for increased taxation on people like himself to reduce inequality.
“Inequality is not inevitable, it’s a policy choice. It’s the product of governments passing policies that favour the very wealthy at the expense of the less fortunate,” he wrote.
Breitbart News’s James Delingpole described Pegg’s activism as an “invaluable reminder of why thespians are much better at speaking lines written for them by clever people than they are at pronouncing intelligently on global fiscal policy”.
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