Jason LaVeris/FilmMagicThe 2016 Academy Awards will mark the second year in a row in which every nominee in all four acting categories—20 slots total—are all white.
As expected, the lack of diversity sparked outrage, leading to another onslaught of 2015's much-used Twitter hashtag #OscarsSoWhite and causing many to speak out publicly.
In fact, one of those people happens to be the Academy president herself, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, who addressed the issue with Deadline following the nominations on Thursday.
"Of course I am disappointed," she told the publication. "But this is not to take away the greatness (of the films nominated). This has been a great year in film, it really has across the board."
However, she added, "You are never going to know what is going to appear on the sheet of paper until you see it," and acknowledged that the efforts at more diversity for the Academy are moving too slowly. "We have got to speed it up."
Following the lack of diversity after the 2015 Oscar nominations, Isaacs—who is the first black president of the Academy and only the third female to hold the role—put an initiative in place called A2020 to help remedy the problem by encouraging the industry to open up more opportunities for women and minorities.
"The Academy has no power over Hollywood. We have nothing to do with hiring," she said in a statement at the time. "What we can do, however, is to get them to widen their normal stream of thought."
Since then, the Academy has welcomed more diverse talent—like David Oyelowo, F. Gary Gray and Gugu Mbatha-Raw—into the group as well as naming Chris Rock the host of the 2016 show and giving some of the biggest producing roles to David Hill and Reginald Hudlin.
Hudlin says the lack of diverse nominees is disappointing, but he refuses to let that take away from the success of the films that told black stories over the year.
"I thought there was an extraordinary amount of Oscar-worthy work by black artists and they all got overlooked," he told Deadline. "That's a lot, so it's very disappointing. But that doesn't change the fact that those movies are there, those movies are great, audiences love them and they were some of the biggest box office of the year."