America Ferrera is speaking up about the “Barbie” snubs at the 2024 Oscars.
While Ferrera is nominated in the Best Supporting Actress category and co-star Ryan Gosling is up for Best Supporting Actor, the film‘s writer/director Greta Gerwig and lead star/producer Margot Robbie were exempt from awards recognition in the Best Director and Best Actress categories. “Barbie” is however up for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, twice for Best Song, and a slew of other nods for a total of eight nominations.
Ferrera told Variety that she was “incredibly disappointed” Gerwig and Robbie were not nominated in their respective categories. Gerwig would have landed her second Best Director nod behind 2017’s “Lady Bird,” and Robbie would have been recognized for a third acting nomination.
“Greta has done just about everything that a director could do to deserve it,” Ferrera said. “Creating this world, and taking something that didn’t have inherent value to most people and making it a global phenomenon. It feels disappointing to not see her on that list.”
The Best Director nominees are Justine Triet (“Anatomy of a Fall”), Martin Scorsese (“Killers of the Flower Moon”), Christopher Nolan (“Oppenheimer”), Yorgos Lanthimos (“Poor Things”) and Jonathan Glazer (“The Zone of Interest”).
Ferrera said of the category, “Women filmmakers telling all different kinds of stories that resonate in different ways in the culture is the goal. I would love to see even more female-directed movies on the list and to see more female directors acknowledged for making the best cinema of the year.”
As for Robbie, Ferrera continued that the role of Stereotypical Barbie was performed seamlessly, but that doesn’t mean the performance was “easy” for the actress.
“What Margot achieved as an actress is truly unbelievable. One of the things about Margot as an actress is how easy she makes everything look,” Ferrera said. “And perhaps people got fooled into thinking that the work seems easy, but Margot is a magician as an actress in front of the screen, and it was one of the honors of my career to get to witness her pull off the amazing performance she did. She brings so much heart and humor and depth and joy and fun to the character. In my book, she’s a master.”
Ferrera added, “It’s been a long ‘Barbie’ journey — I mean longer even for Greta and Margot and [co-writer] Noah [Baumbach], it’s been years and years and years — everyone’s really excited that we get to celebrate and to end this journey at the biggest party of the year.”
See all of the 2024 Oscars snubs and surprise nominations here and check out IndieWire awards editor Marcus Jones’ interview with Ferrera.
