Michelle Yeoh offers a response to her alleged snub of Emma Stone at the Oscars. Stone won best Actress at the Oscars on Sunday for her performance as Bella Baxter in Poor Things. Competing against her for the award were Lily Gladstone for Killers of the Flower Moon, Carey Mulligan for Maestro, Annette Bening for Nyad, and Sandra Hüller for Anatomy of a Fall.
As per Yeoh’s post on Instagram, she explains why she let Jennifer Lawrence hand over the Oscar to Stone. In her post, Yeoh celebrated Stone, congratulating her. She said that she “confused” Stone, but then went on to explain why Jennifer Lawrence ended up handing the award to Stone.
According to Yeoh, she wanted Lawrence and Stone to be able to share the moment because Lawrence is a “best friend” to Stone. This reminded the Everything Everywhere All At Once actress of her “Bae Jamie Lee Curtis,” in that, like Curtis and Yeoh, Stone and Lawrence are “always there for each other.”
The Best Actress Controversy Explained
The acting categories were unusual this year at the Oscars in that instead of bringing out one presenter, they brought in five. These five were all previous winners of their chosen award, including Mahershala Ali for Moonlight, Mary Steenburgen for Melvin and Howard, and Lawrence for Silver Linings Playbook. As is customary at the Oscars, however, the previous winner of the category read the name of the winner, which in the case of Best Actress, was Yeoh. This is why some found it odd that Yeoh handed the award to Lawrence.
The statuette handoff was far from the only controversy surrounding Best Actress at the Oscars this year. While there were five actresses in contention, the 2024 Oscars was widely considered to be a race between Stone in Poor Things and Gladstone in Killers of the Flower Moon. If Gladstone had won, she would have been the first Native American person to win in the category, marking a historic win.
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Both for this reason and for the strength of her performance as Mollie Burkhart, Gladstone was considered a favorite by many towards the end of predictions. Thus, it was surprising — and for some, disappointing — to see Gladstone lose out the award to Stone, who, unlike Gladstone, had won before (for her performance in 2016’s La La Land). With that and the odd Yeoh handoff moment, the tightest race of the Oscars also became one of its most controversial moments.
