Oscars: Progress in Diversity Means Fewer Firsts Spread Among More Categories

The nominations for the 94th Academy Awards on Tuesday reveal a gradual trickle-up effect for diversity, with added recognition for women and people from the global majority in both onscreen and behind-the-scenes roles.

In the acting categories, what a difference a casting decision can make. CODA supporting actor Troy Kotsur became the second deaf performer ever nominated for an Oscar, following his co-star Marlee Matlin’s nod exactly 35 years ago for Children of a Lesser God. Whereas the Academy has recognized portrayals of deaf characters as recently as last year’s Sound of Metal, other than Matlin and Kotsur, hearing actors have played those roles.

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West Side Story’s Ariana DeBose is the first Afro-Latino performer ever to receive an Oscar nomination  (Lupita Nyong’o, who was born in Mexico, was nominated for 12 Years a Slave in 2014, but she does not self-identify as Afro-Latina.) DeBose and King Richard’s Aunjanue Ellis make for two Black nominees in the supporting actress field for the first time since 2018.

While the lead actress race was shut out from women who hail from the global majority or have a disability, two Black Academy vets — King Richard’s Will Smith and The Tragedy of Macbeth’s Denzel Washington — are competing for lead actor. Thrice-nominated Smith and Washington, who now extends his record as Oscar’s most nominated Black performer with nine acting noms (seven in the lead category), previously faced off in 2002, the first time the lead actor race ever saw more than one nominee from the global majority.

Offscreen, although Asian directors have now been nominated for three Academy Awards in a row, Drive My Car’s Ryûsuke Hamaguchi represents the first time a helmer of Japanese descent has become a nominee since Akira Kurosawa in 1986. (Hiroshi Teshigahara was the first Japanese and first Asian Oscar-nominated director 20 years prior to that.) Hamaguchi also shares an adapted screenplay nom with Takamasa Oe, and the Haruki Murakami adaptation’s best picture nomination makes Teruhisa Yamamoto the first Japanese producer to be recognized in that category. As expected, the film has earned an international feature nomination, alongside first-time nominee Bhutan for Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom. Meanwhile, The Power of the Dog’s Jane Campion becomes the only woman ever to earn a repeat directing nomination, following her nom for The Piano 28 years ago.

Encanto’s nominations mark a couple of Oscar firsts for Latinas: producer Yvett Merino for animated feature, and composer Germaine Franco — the first Latina ever accepted into the Academy’s music branch — for original score. Their fellow Chicano artist Carlos López Estrada, one of the directors of Raya and the Last Dragon, also received a nomination for animated feature. (Encanto’s Lin-Manuel Miranda is nominated for original song — although not for “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” — joining King Richard’s DIXSON and Beyoncé Knowles-Carter as nominees from the global majority in that category.)

A year after Mia Neal and Jamika Wilson of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom made Oscar history as the first Black nominees (and eventual winners) in makeup and hairstyling, Coming 2 America’s hair department heads Stacey Morris and Carla Farmer (the latter also headed King Richard’s hair department this season) have become the next two. For House of Gucci, Lady Gaga’s hairstylist Frederic Aspiras, who is of Filipino and Vietnamese descent, also earned a nomination, becoming the second Asian nominee after multi-winner Kazu Hiro in the category. In costume design, West Side Story‘s Paul Tazewell is the first Black man to be nominated in that field.

The diversity within this year’s documentary feature race is also worth noting. Alongside the team nominated for the Danish animated film Flee is Ascension’s Jessica Kingdon, who is of Chinese descent, Attica’s Stanley Nelson and Traci A. Curry, who are both Black, Summer of Soul’s Questlove and Joseph Patel, who are Black and of Indian descent, respectively, and Writing With Fire’s Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh, a co-ed pair of filmmakers from India making their feature debut. And the animated short category features a pair of Chilean artists (Bestia’s Hugo Covarrubias and Tevo Diaz) and a Kazakh filmmaker (Boxballet’s Anton Dyakov).

Feb. 8, 5:19 p.m. Added mentions of House of Gucci hairstylist Frederic Aspiras and West Side Story‘s Paul Tazewell. Corrected Denzel Washington’s career number of lead and total Oscar acting nominations.