When The Razzies announced the latest crop of nominations, the organization once again ignited a backlash, this time for nominating 12-year-old actor Ryan Kiera Armstrong for her work in the new take on Stephen King’s Firestarter, with star of the original adaptation Drew Barrymore calling out the organization for bullying the young performer. Barrymore herself was quick to admit that it’s important to have a sense of humor about yourself and own your mistakes, but isolating such a young performer is less lighthearted teasing and more bullying. The Razzies have since rescinded their nomination of Armstrong.
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“Well, this makes my blood boil. Listen, I get poking fun at ourselves, I mean come on fair game bring it on, but Ryan is 12 years old and Razzie co-founder John Wilson has since apologized and removed her from the category and said they’re implementing a new rule precluding anyone 18 years or younger…I would just say to them, ‘Please don’t do this to people who are younger. That’s not nice,’” Barrymore expressed on The Drew Barrymore Show, per The Independent. “And I really like Ryan… don’t do this again.”
On CBS This Morning, Barrymore spoke further about the situation.
“I don’t like it. She is younger and it is bullying. We do want to be cautious about how we speak to or about people because it encourages other people to join in on that bandwagon. I’m glad to see people didn’t jump on the ‘let’s make fun of her’ wave and instead said, ‘This isn’t right,’” the actor confessed. “You got to have a sense of humor but when you’re talking about children all bets are off. I don’t like it.”
Proving that she had a sense of humor about projects she regretted, she was happy to cite Doppelganger and Waxwork II: Lost in Time as movies worth poking fun at.
Barrymore isn’t alone in owning her mistakes, as performers like Halle Berry and Sandra Bullock also attended the in-person ceremony to accept their awards in years past. In recent years, however, the tides of public opinion have turned more sour towards the event.
Last year, the event launched a new category spotlighting the worst Bruce Willis performance in a movie, only for Willis to reveal an aphasia diagnosis that impacted his mental and speech capabilities. The organization issued an apology and scrapped the category.
In response to the backlash over nominating Armstrong, The Razzies not only retracted the nomination, but changed protocols to not select anyone under 18 for nomination. The organization had previously nominated 11-year-old Jake Lloyd and 14-year-old Macaulay Culkin.
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