David Fincher's Mank, starring Gary Oldman, leads the field. Photo / Netflix
David Fincher's Mank, starring Gary Oldman, leads the field. Photo / Netflix
It was a history-making year for the Oscars with two women competing in the Best Director category.
But before it got to the directing category, those watching the nominations livestream were shocked to see Judas and the Black Messiah star Lakeith Stanfield show up in the Best Supporting Actor category.
It's not that Stanfield's nervy and intense performance as a FBI informant who betrayed Black Panther leader Fred Hampton wasn't deserving, it was that his role was arguably a lead, and he had been submitted by Warner Bros. in the Lead Actor category.
Frances McDormand in Nomadland, which scooped six nominations. Photo / AP
The last time Academy voters went rogue and nominated an actor in a category they didn't campaign for was Kate Winslet for The Reader in 2008, who had originally been submitted in Supporting Actress but was placed in Lead Actress by the Academy voters. In that instance, Winslet was indeed the lead actor in her film.
Sometimes studios place actors in a different category if they think there's a better chance they'll win there or if they don't want to pit two or more co-stars with generally equal screentime against each other.
It's more likely that lead actors are entered in the supporting races rather than the other way around. The industry nickname for the practice is "category fraud".
Chloe Zhao has been nominated for best director for her film Nomadland. Photo / AP
Stanfield's inclusion in the Best Supporting Actor race is slightly awkward as Judas co-star and presumptive frontrunner Daniel Kaluuya is also nominated.
But the real history making moment was reserved for Best Director when Nomadland director Chloe Zhao and Promising Young Woman director Emerald Fennell were nominated against David Fincher for his film Mank, Lee Isaac Chung for Minari and Thomas Vinterberg for Another Round.
As momentous as the milestone of two female directors is, it also highlighted how deficit the Oscars voting body has been in its 93-year history in recognising female filmmakers.
Zhao and Fennell are only the sixth and seventh woman to ever be nominated in Best Director. The other five were Lina Wertmuller, Jane Campion, Sofia Coppola, Kathryn Bigelow and Greta Gerwig. Bigelow is the only one to have won, for The Hurt Locker.
Chinese director Zhao is the first culturally diverse woman to be nominated in Best Director.
Zhao and Fennell are both multiple nominees this year with the women also picking up nods as producers and screenwriters of their respective films while Zhao has a fourth nomination in the editing category.
They are the only Best Director nominees who also produced their Best Picture nominated films.
Zhao and Fennell were widely tipped to be Best Director nominees this year while the surprise entrant in the category was actually Danish filmmaker Vinterberg, who pushed out expected nominee The Trial of the Chicago 7's Aaron Sorkin.
Sorkin, who is better known as a writer before moving into directing as well, was nominated in Original Screenplay while Chicago 7 nabbed a Best Picture nod among its six nominations.
Black-and-white Netflix film Mank is leading the pack with 10 nominations, including for Best Picture, actor Gary Oldman and supporting actress for Amanda Seyfried. However, it missed out on an original screenplay nod for Fincher's father Jack Fincher.
The Trial of the Chicago 7 got six nominations. Photo / Netflix
Behind Mank in the nomination stakes with six nods each are Minari, Nomadland, Sound of Metal, The Father and The Trial of the Chicago 7.
Promising Young Woman and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom both had five nominations each.
Stanfield and Kaluuya are among a raft of non-white acting nominees this year after a recent push to diversify the Oscars voting body to include more female, diverse and international members in response to successive years of Oscars So White backlash.
Nine of the 20 acting nominations this year are performers from culturally diverse backgrounds including Riz Ahmed, Steven Yeun and Chadwick Boseman in Best Actor, Viola Davis and Andra Day in Best Actress, Stanfield, Kaluuya and Leslie Odom Jr. in Best Supporting Actor and Yuh-jung Youn in Best Supporting Actress.
Pixar's Soul received three nominations. Photo / Supplied
In other historical firsts, Yeun's nomination makes him the first Asian-American actor in the Lead Actor category while Ahmed is the first Muslim man to compete for Lead Actor. Ahmed previously became the first Muslim to win a lead acting category at the Emmys in 2017 for his work in The Night Of.
The most notable snub was the near-shut out of Spike Lee's Da 5 Bloods which was considered a strong Oscars contenders when it was released in mid-2020, especially for actor Delroy Lindo. Da 5 Bloods only managed a Best Score nomination.
The Oscars ceremony will be on Monday, April 26, New Zealand time.
