Michelle Yeoh won best actress at the 95th Oscars as the first Asian woman to take the prize. In 95 years of the Academy Awards, only one other woman of color had won that prize: Halle Berry, who happened to be presenting that night, 22 years after her own win for “Monster’s Ball”.
Variety’s Clayton Davis called the evening “a milestone for Asian talent in front of and behind the camera.” The A24 film “Everything Everywhere All at Once” took seven statuettes, including best picture, director and original screenplay for Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. Jamie Lee Curtis won supporting actress and Ke Huy Quan supporting actor. Kwan became the second Asian winner of the picture, director and screenplay “hat trick”, after Bong Joon Ho for “Parasite”.
Slow openings
The route to that night was long. A scholar writing in The Conversation points to Hattie McDaniel, who won best supporting actress for playing “Mammy” in “Gone with the Wind” and became the first nonwhite actor to win an Academy Award. Sidney Poitier followed with a best actor win in 1963 for “Lilies of the Field”. Then came a gap of more than 40 years before Berry took best actress in 2002.
Octavia Spencer won in 2011 for “The Help”, again in the role of a maid, which that writer noted echoed McDaniel’s part.
The hashtag and the response
On Jan. 15, 2015, activist April Reign tweeted “#OscarsSoWhite they asked to touch my hair.” The hashtag spread within a day. By 2016 the acting categories had no Black nominee at all, despite work by Michael B. Jordan in “Creed”, Will Smith in “Concussion” and Corey Hawkins in “Straight Outta Compton”.
Academy leaders did not always agree on the problem. Cheryl Boone Isaacs, the Academy’s first Black president, elected in 2013, answered “Not at all” when asked in 2015 whether the Academy had a diversity problem. In 2020 CEO Dawn Hudson struck a different note: “The need to address this issue is urgent.” That same year the Academy set representation and inclusion standards that take effect in 2024, meant to “encourage equitable representation on and off screen.” Critics replied that a film like “The Irishman”, with virtually no Black characters, could still meet them by hiring a white female casting director and a Mexican cinematographer.
What the counts show
The numbers are blunt. Of 336 acting Oscars awarded through the 94th ceremony, only 20 went to performers of color, roughly 6%. No Black person had won for directing. Of the 86 Black acting nominations in that span, more than 40% went to repeat names such as Denzel Washington and Smith.
Variety’s tally after the 95th ceremony put the total at more than 3,100 statuettes across all categories. Asian people hold 43, after adding four that night with producer Jonathan Wang, Kwan, Quan and Yeoh. Black and African-American people hold 41, and 19 of those belong to Black women. Latinos hold 34. Indigenous people hold two.
Some milestones had come just before. Chloe Zhao won best director for “Nomadland” and Jane Campion followed for “The Power of the Dog”, two years of women in that category. Troy Kotsur won for “CODA” as only the second deaf actor to take an Oscar. Yeoh’s win also came 40 years after Ben Kingsley, who is of Indian descent, won best actor for “Gandhi”. No female filmmakers were recognized at the 2023 ceremony, Davis noted.
New best picture diversity and inclusion requirements were due to apply from the 96th ceremony.
Sources
- #OscarsSoWhite still plagues Hollywood's highest achievement awards – The Conversation
- Asian Representation Has Historic Night With 'Everything Everywhere' Oscar Wins – Variety
