“Not everybody gets a prize,” says The View moderator and Oscar winner for her performance in 1990’s Ghost.
The most controversial decision coming out of the 2024 Oscar nominations are two women who weren’t nominated for their work on the blockbuster Barbie film. But while many in the media (both social and professional) are calling foul, Oscar-winner Whoopi Goldberg says not so fast.
Goldberg, who has achieved the coveted EGOT status, spoke up about the latest “snubs” on Wednesday’s episode of The View, where she immediately pushed back against that word and that narrative.
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“They’re not snubs,” she emphasized on the show, noting that “everybody doesn’t win.”
“It’s not the elites, it’s the entire family of the Academy who vote for best picture nominations,” Goldberg continued. “We all vote for best picture. Everybody. You don’t get everything that you want to get.”
Barbie was one of the biggest films of the year with many anticipating it would dominate Oscar nominations after it became the second most-nominated film of all time at the Golden Globes with 10, including nods for Gerwig and Robbie.
It is worth noting, though, that Barbie was categorized as a “Musical or Comedy” film at the Globes — Robbie was nominated in this category for lead actress — and those types of films notoriously don’t fare as well at the Oscars, which tends to emphasize dramas. Oppenheimer came behind Barbie with eight Golden Globe noms.
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As most experts could have predicted, Oppenheimer — a far more serious historic drama (i.e., Oscar bait) — flipped the script and dominated at the Oscar nominations with 13 nods. Barbie had to settle for fourth place with eight noms, behind Emma Stone’s quirky Poor Things (11) and Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon (10).
Perhaps the biggest reason the absences of both Robbie and Gerwig (for direction) from the Oscar nominations stood out to critics was because Ryan Gosling repeated his Golden Globe nomination with an Oscar nod for his portrayal of Ken in the film.
Gosling himself came out with a statement after nominations were revealed, emphasizing that he was both “honored” and “disappointed.” He noted, “There is no Barbie movie without Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie, the two people most responsible for this history-making, globally celebrated film.”
The fact Robbie’s male co-star was nominated and she was not was for many proof that the film’s message was more resonant than ever.
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Before Goldberg’s comments on The View, Alyssa Farah Griffin asked if this was proof the Academy “miss[ed] the whole moral of the story of Barbie? Of course we celebrate just Ken, not the woman who’s the lead in it and the icon in it.”
It is worth noting that Barbie did pick up a Best Picture nomination, as well as an Adapted Screenplay nod for Gerwig and Noah Baumbach. America Ferrera was also nominated for her supporting role. Additional nominations came for costume and production design, as well as two of the five Original Song nominations (Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?” and “I’m Just Ken”).
After Sara Haines argued that everyone outside of the five nominees becomes a snub of sorts, Goldberg again emphasized, “There are no snubs, and that’s what you have to keep in mind. Not everybody gets a prize.”
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