Frances McDormand backs Grenfell billboards campaign following Oscars win

Frances McDormand, who won the best actress Oscar on Monday for her lead role in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, has backed the Grenfell Tower campaign that echoed the film. Campaign group Justice4Grenfell hired three billboards on trucks and emblazoned them with red and black posters asking “71 Dead”, “And still no arrests?”, “How come?”, and drove past the destroyed residential block before parking outside the Houses of Parliament in protest.

Following her Oscars win, Frances commented on the campaign, which was also imitated by another protest group for gun control following the Stoneman Douglas high school shooting in Florida in February. “Billboards still work,” she said, “so I think that it’s really exciting… the idea that activists are taking that kind of statement and putting it out there.

“It started actually with the Grenfell Tower fire investigation, then it leapfrogged to [the] Miami gun control situation, it was outside the UN… That’s the kind of power that an image can have and that’s what we’re making, we’re making powerful images.”

This follows news that the site of Grenfell Tower may be turned into a public memorial, after Kensington and Chelsea council said it would let the community decide on plans for its future. The council stated: “The common assumption is that the consultation will lead towards agreement on a fitting memorial to remember those who lost their lives; and a request for Transport for London (TfL) for the renaming of Latimer Road underground station to commemorate Grenfell Tower.” The tower will first be demolished, following ongoing forensic investigations.