How Outgoing Academy President Janet Yang Fixed the Oscars: “We’re a Little Cooler Now”

“In the beginning, I didn’t know exactly what the president was supposed to do,” admits Janet Yang when we sit down in the Academy’s Los Angeles offices for a conversation about her three-year tenure as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Yang stepped into the high-profile role right as the Academy was reeling from tough knocks and scandals including the best-picture envelope mix-up, Will Smith slapping Chris Rock, and the organization’s controversial decision to announce some of the Oscar winners outside of the broadcast. Whenever something goes awry at the Oscars, Academy leadership often is the one who shoulders the blame, fair or not.

Yang and newly installed Academy CEO Bill Kramer soldiered on. They focused on connecting the Academy’s more than 10,000 members, uniting its 55-person board, and bringing in more international members from outside the US. “We could really build things from the ground up,” she says. “We wanted more member engagement. We wanted to be more international. One of the big things that I felt strongly about was the culture and the tone of not just the Oscars, but the whole Academy.”

First, they went on a listening tour, hearing from many of those members about what could be improved. Then they took action. They created two new awards categories—one for casting, which will be handed out for the first time in 2026, and one for stunt design, beginning in 2028. The Academy also changed several eligibility rules, emphasizing theatrical runs, and, recently, requiring that voters actually see all the nominated films in a given category in order to vote for that category. And now the organization has announced the Janet Yang Endowment, which will create funding and resources to support Asian and AAPI programming at the Academy Museum and in the Academy Collection. (Yang, a veteran producer known especially for her support of Asian and Asian American storytellers, made history as only the fourth woman and second person of color to ever hold the job.)

Her tenure wasn’t without its hiccups—like when she made a social media post supporting Everything Everywhere All at Once star Michelle Yeoh (which she later deleted). But the overwhelming impression is that she and Kramer were able to right the ship, unite the group, and put on entertaining and engaging shows (with higher ratings than the telecasts right before her tenure).

Yang, who is at the end of her second three-year stint as a governor-at-large, will keep her title until the Academy’s new president is announced in the coming weeks. She won’t even hint at who that might be, but she does have some sage advice for whomever picks up the mantle: “You should be yourself. We’re a bunch of crazy artists—nobody wants a bureaucrat.”

Yang has practiced what she preaches. A warm presence on carpets and at events, Yang used her strong social skills to welcome more Academy members into the conversation. She would often travel abroad to host Academy events that made the larger international membership feel included. And she did less talking, hearing members out and creating a more united front among the organization’s board members. In the end, she figured out exactly what an Academy president is supposed to do: “The advice is really to listen,” she says. “That person needs to be up for being a friendly face of the organization. It’s a little bit of an ambassadorial role. People will listen, and will really pay attention to what you say.”

Vanity Fair: When we spoke in 2022, there had been a lot of turmoil within the Academy. You must have been a little worried stepping into that spotlight as the new president.

Janet Yang: It’s something that’s always looming. But I think we were so engaged in the work. That’s one thing I think has changed: The board is so respectful of one another, and we’re able to get things done. I think before there was a little bit of this push-pull, push-pull, push—and factions. So I felt like we were working together as one, and that was really gratifying.

How hard was it to get the Oscars for casting and stunt design through?

There’s a process. We rely on committees. It’s a lot of consensus building, and it’s a lot of really hearing people’s ideas. I felt like it was important to go to all the committee meetings, to hear who had a really strong objection and why, or who is in support. You just keep massaging the opinions until people come to a conclusion that results in a decision. But it did take a while. One of the things Bill and I learned was the speed with which you do things can’t be too fast. They can’t be too slow. You really have to find the right rhythm so people get comfortable.

Obviously those aren’t the most star-studded categories, and the show is already long. How will they figure that out?

One thing that’s well-known at this point is that we’re leading up to the 100th Oscars, and that’s when our contract with Disney ends. The awards committee and the whole board will have some really fun conversations that have already started. It’s kind of hitting a reset button, saying, “What is it going to look like after the 100th?” I can’t say too much, but the timing seems fortuitous—that all these things are happening at the same time.

Change isn’t always easy for this group. I remember the uproar over moving some of the awards off the broadcast.

Oh, believe me, there was. And I really believe that some of the outrage came from lack of communication. I think that’s something we have worked hard at: transparency, transparency, transparency. There’s just a lot of thoughtfulness about who needs to hear what first.

How did the new theatrical requirements come about?

That’s an issue that obviously has a wide range of opinions. Some people are really die-hard with “movies in theaters,” and we uphold that to some degree. But we can’t discount the fact that streamers are alive and well. Some people say it’s too little, some people say it’s too much. We do have to protect small movies, indie movies. Those conversations took hours and hours—weeks and months just trying to find the right solution. But I think we found a good balance.

What was it like to see the scandal around Karla Sofía Gascón unfold?

The whole thing was so unpleasant, unfortunate. [There] was so much controversy. We were certainly not going to disinvite her. I felt bad for people who worked long and hard on a very good movie. I recently met with Zoe [Saldaña], and I was talking to [Netflix publicist] Lisa Taback, who was getting death threats. It was pretty wild. I felt bad for a lot of people.