Normally, we love an underdog during Oscars season. When a movie that barely anyone has heard of, let alone seen, suddenly crops up in the Academy Award nominations, it naturally attracts buzz. Add to that a British actress who’s not so famous in the USA and there’s even more attention. Yet, last week’s announcement of Andrea Risborough’s Best Actress nomination for her role playing an alcoholic single mother in indie film To Leslie has instead attracted a growing backlash, reigniting ongoing issues around racial exclusion and privilege at the Oscars amid claims she benefited unfairly from an influential A-lister campaign that helped her skip the usual routes that lead to a nomination. So much so that this week, the Academy announced that they were reviewing the nomination process to ensure no rules had been broken.
The orchestrated celebrity support Andrea garnered from Hollywood heavy-hitters including Gwyneth Paltrow, Mia Farrow, Courteney Cox, Jennifer Aniston, Sarah Paulson and Minnie Driver ( who reportedly held screenings of the film and then all vocalised their support on social media ) - could still have been a positive story of women supporting women in an industry that needs to catch up with progressive diversity and inclusion action overall. That is if only her surprise nomination wasn’t perceived as coming at the highest cost to Black female actresses - of whom there were numerous viable contenders - who were entirely snubbed from the highly-coveted, top category this year.
Facing up to the backlash, the Academy of Motion Pictures this week announced they’ll review campaign procedures around this year’s nominees, to ensure no guidelines were violated – such as direct solicitation of votes during the crucial nomination voting period of January 12-17. After a few days consideration, they found that Andrea's nomination should not, as her detractors have demanded, be rescinded. They said that after investigation into the nomination they could only find social media tactics that ‘caused concern’, but not enough to pull her out of the race. It’s hardly Andrea’s fault that these two issues have collided. But that still shouldn’t quiet the calls for the Academy to do better for Black female actresses after decades of disappointment.
How is it possible that the more exceptional Black women become in Hollywood, the more we are ignored?
What’s most inexcusable about this year’s nominations triggering a fresh wave of blocking out Black women is that it’s happened despite 2022 being a year of dazzlingly impressive and commercially-successful performances from multiple Black actresses. Droves of film fans expected to see Viola Davis Oscar-nominated for her title role in the groundbreaking The Woman King, or Danielle Deadwyler for her moving portrayal of a justice-seeking mother in Till - whom The Times chief film critic believes should have been nominated. And it’s staggering that Letitia Wright was snubbed across the entire awards season despite levelling up as the incredible female hero of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. It was a total triumph for a then-27-year-old Black British actress to hold an 841 million USD-earning sequel together after the tragic loss of its title star Chadwick Boseman to cancer, and yet the industry has behaved as if she doesn’t exist.
Viola joins a star-studded cast.
With that context, I couldn’t click ‘Like’ fast enough on the Instagram post from Till’s Black female director Chinonye Chukwu, who called out Hollywood’s misogynoir after her film was completely overlooked this year, declaring her pride and resistance despite us living ‘in a world and working in industries that are so aggressively committed to upholding whiteness and perpetuating an unabashed misogyny towards black women’.
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Experiencing both the racism faced by people of colour and the sexism faced by women, leads to familiar and frustrating intersectional limitations for Black women in a more compounded way than most marginalized groups. And this results in more wage disparity, fewer opportunities and minimal celebration of our contributions, with the Oscars outcry mirroring what happens in most other industries including technology and finance. But it’s also an especially disappointing reflection on the Academy, following declarations they’d improve Black inclusion through a series of commitments after the #OscarsSoWhite controversy of 2015. This included reconfiguring the nomination process and establishing new representation and inclusion standards. Clearly, change is urgently needed, with this year’s shortlists only featuring five Black nominees in total, despite African-Americans making up 12.1% of the US population.
It’s infuriating that the industry’s most influential academy could fail to nominate Viola Davis for her powerhouse performance in The Woman King, in peak physical fitness at 56, doing all of her own stunts. She was also integral behind the camera in making a success of an underdog movie that created so many powerful new proof points within a typically non-inclusive industry. It took years of extra personal effort from her production company JuVee Productions and a Hollywood team before finally securing a 50 million USD budget with TriStar and EntertainmentOne, successfully declining earlier requests to cast lighter-skinned actresses and an initial budget of 5 million USD. The film also showcased an incredible cast of talented, dark-skinned Black women including Britain’s Lashana Lynch and Sheila Atim, and South Africa’s Thuso Mbedu, to create a compelling and layered story about powerful female characters who didn’t need a white saviour.
‘As Black women we’ve been given insurmountable odds. Our voices have been stifled, we haven’t been seen, we’ve been invisible for so long,’ Viola explained in a cast interview when asked why taking up space is important within a film made by, for and with Black women. ‘We are at a pivotal time in our culture where you have to show up and to be seen and heard.’
The film was a huge leap forward in positively representing women who embody all of the things Black women are often discriminated against for in the film industry, but an Oscar nomination would have solidified its importance. Then the Academy could have felt proud of supporting a powerful ripple effect across the entire industry, transforming the types of films that get invested in, the crews and casts who get opportunities, and who gets celebrated on award stages. If you take a look around, it’s easy to see films like this barely exist.
Films by women already exist and have done for a long time. We just need the Academy to catch up and reward it.
Aside from the commercial success of The Woman King earning $95 million USD globally it has also maintained a 99% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes. In comparison, To Leslie earned $27,000 USD at the box office. In Viola, there could not be a greater role model both for Black women who rarely see themselves in movies and for an industry that is risk-averse when it comes to creating movies for overlooked audiences.
As a fellow Brit, I still wish Andrea all the best on Oscar night, but I hope this controversy makes Hollywood’s most privileged members do more to end the continued disadvantage Black actresses face if they don’t have a group of powerful white friends to lobby on their behalf. And since the Academy states its core purpose is to support and advance the film industry, we need to see them take more effective action to drive overdue change, so that it finally becomes easier and more equitable for Black women to also be celebrated in their true glory.
