Jennifer Lopez was snubbed for an Oscar nomination for Hustlers. She played a stripper who developed a scheme to drug rich dudes and steal their money, and she led the gang of strippers who rolled dozens – perhaps hundreds – of men this way. It was honestly one of the best performances of her career and a great reminder that J.Lo can still do THAT, meaning she can just kill a dramatic roll and play a gangster. While Jen was nominated for a Golden Globe and SAG, she was snubbed for BAFTA and Oscar nominations. I couldn’t figure out why Academy voters had such an issue until the Hollywood Reporter published their Brutally Honest Oscar Ballots and one dude basically could not wrap his head around the idea of a lady playing a gangster. That’s all it was – dudes (aka Oscar voters) hated the idea of a hot woman doing gangster sh-t and not caring about the dudes who only see her as a sexual object. Anyway, it turns out that Jennifer really was upset about the Oscar nomination snub:
After months of buzz for her scene-stealing role in Hustlers, Jennifer Lopez said not getting nominated for an Academy Award was disappointing.
“I was a little sad because there was a lot of buildup to it,” the superstar, 50, told Oprah Winfrey at the media mogul’s 2020 Vision: Your Life In Focus Tour on Saturday. “I got so many good notices – more than ever in my career. And I’m reading all the articles and I’m going, ‘Oh my God, could this happen?’ And then it didn’t and it was like, ‘Ouch.’ It was a bit of a letdown.”
Lopez went on to share that she couldn’t help but feel like she had let down everybody who has supported her for decades.
“Most of my team has been with me for years,” she said. “I think they had a lot of hopes on that. They wanted it too, and I felt like I let everybody down a little bit.”
“But you didn’t!” replied Winfrey, as Lopez explained that while she knew that wasn’t really the case, “I felt like that for a bit.”
However, while Lopez may have been snubbed by the Oscars, she ultimately realized that she didn’t need another accolade to “tell me I’m enough.”
“I needed to go through the Oscar snub, the Super Bowl being, you know, what it is — all of the things that I went through in the last year,” she said, noting that after being rewarded and let down, she realized, “‘Oh my God, I don’t need that. I’m actually here and I am okay and I am enough. I don’t need this award right here to tell me I’m enough. I don’t need it.’ ”
This made me feel so sad for her, honestly. Like, I know she’s rich and successful as hell and she has three huge mansions around the country. But she really did deserve an Oscar nomination. I will never forgive Laura Dern for that sh-t! Dern ended up sweeping the awards for just playing a version of Laura Wasser. Anyway… it f–king sucks that every g–damn year, Academy voters go out of their way to make an actor of color feel like sh-t, feel like they’re not good enough or that they didn’t do enough to “earn” a place at the table. J.Lo was this year’s Idris Elba.
Photos courtesy of WENN & ‘Hustlers’.
Before the usual “She was not Oscar-worthy” brigade arrive, let me just say that celebrated Asian icon Emma Stone actually WON just a few years ago for mumbling and struggle-dancing her way through Blah Blah land.
She deserved the nomination, not the oscar but the nomination hell yes!
The academy are odd ducks. Julia Roberts won for Erin Brockovich & Sandra Bullock won for The Blind Side. Both are popular/America sweetheart/ good actresses but neither of those roles deserved an Oscar. Cher should have won for Mask but they passed her over that year & gave her a “make up Oscar” the next year for Moonstruck. The Oscars has become much like the Heisman Trophy which goes to the player (QB/RB) from the team w/a chance to win the National Title.
I watch for the Fashion.
I’m one of those who thinks the performance wasn’t that amazing, but I also did not like Emma Stone in La La Land and when I finally saw it (after the Oscars where she won) I could not believe she had won for that. and I will say that I thought J Lo’s performance in Hustlers was better than Emma’s in La La Land.
Anyway – whatever I personally thought about the movie and her performance, there was DEFINITELY significant buzz around it and when there is so much build up and anticipation, it has to sting to not even be nominated when your name has been discussed for months as a likely WINNER. So I do feel bad for J Lo in that regard.
I’m the same becks. I thought it was probably HER best performance, but that doesn’t equal best overall compared to everyone. And I still think Lupita’s was the greater snub.
That said, I do agree that it was a more interesting and engaging performance than Emma’s in La La Land. I still can’t believe she won for that.
I like Emma Stone, but she has no range. I liked La La Land too but it boggles the mind that she won an Oscar for that performance. It was a very average performance in a cool movie.
Hollywood wants to make Emma a consist Oscar nominee and I don’t get that. She’s a perfectly decent actress who picks good projects, but nothing special.
Emma’s best performance is Easy A, I think of her as a great comedic actress.
Yeah I like Emma Stone, but each time I watch that movie (I love a few of the songs) I can’t get over how average the performances are.
Gimme some Gene Kelly & Rita Hayworth Musical talent!!
She’s right when she says she didn’t need the Oscar. The Oscars needed her, and other artists like her, to want nominations and thus give the whole sham credibility. Seeing POC do great work and then hurt themselves waiting for Oscar nods is the worst part of the film year.
Agree would have been nice if she was nominated. Least she’s direct about wanting it instead of pretending
I did not see her movie so I can’t judge her acting. But she shouldn’t feel bad and I have no doubt she will jump back from this. I’m not a fan but her name will live on for decades! Bravo and keep entertaining!
Don’t say that, Jen!! It is the Academy that should be ashamed.
She was absolutely snubbed and she absolutely deserved the nomination. But please don’t blame Laura Dern! Dern was always going to be nominated/win. For a start, she was ‘due’. If anything, Kathy Bates and/or Florence Pugh took JLo’s slot. But they’re not to blame either!
I really thought Hustlers was a bad movie. And I don’t say that about many movies. It was so poorly structured and lagged in the middle. It showed the same scenes over and over. The way Julia Stiles was spliced into the story was kinda distracting. I couldn’t believe how bored I was.
That said, that Hollywood Reporter article about the Oscar voter who couldn’t understand how a movie could be about women gangsters and assumed it was “female empowerment” was so alarming. It just goes to show how few stories about women are out there that they have to fit into very limited boxes in order to be accepted. I’m grateful that Hustlers tried to expand on the kind of stories told about women, by women, but I just didn’t think it succeeded in being a good film.
I agree, it just wasn’t that great of a movie. It reminded me of Widows because it was women scheming to pull off a crime like men traditionally would, only to me the pacing and acting in Widows was actually AMAZING and I thought that was one of the best movies of the season before this one. And it barely got recognized, either. JLo was definitely the best part of Hustlers, and I think there were a number of reasons she got “robbed,” with some making more sense than others.
Widows was SO GOOD. I don’t understand why it didn’t get more love
She didn’t win because the movie was bad, and JLo didn’t deserve it.
@Rachel – thank you. I said in a post a few weeks back that sometimes one is not nominated/does not win because they simply aren’t that good. Even if it is that actor’s best performance, it still may not be “the best” performance. And to those who say J. Lo’s performance was better than some of the others, I say it is still a matter of opinion, which as we know is always subjective.
I thought she was better than the lead but not great. But then also I don’t think Dern, phoenix and scarjo deserved their wins/nominations. Oh well..
lol the truth hurts. but we’ll let jlo milk this conversation for all it’s worth.
Yes! Maybe if her team hadn’t kept telling her how “great” she was, she wouldn’t have had her precious feelings hurt. It may have been J’s best work but that’s not a high bar. I don’t think she’s a great actress but lots of those have gotten Oscars. How about Goopy Paltrow & Judi Dench for Shakespeare in Love? Judi had about 2 minutes on screen. I love Kathy Bates but did she deserve an Oscar for Misery? Zellweger for grinning & hopping her way through Cold Mountain? Anne Hathaway?
Liz Taylor got Oscared for Butterfield 8, a make-up for not getting it a year earlier (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.)
Oprah is overly sympathetic to Jlo, as O badly wanted to win for The Color Purple but lost to Anjelica Huston (Prizzi’s Honor) & has snubbed Huston ever since, won’t even say “hello.” Read Huston’s memoir.
Hustlers was filmed and edited in less than six months, it was a huge box office hit and yet JLo was snubbed ughhhh
Nope, she didn’t deserve it to be nominated!
You know who was actually snubbed? Lupita! She deserved to be nominated for her performance. .
Lupita, Willem Dafoe , Helena Zengel, Lulu Wang and Joanna Hogg…so many movies/performances that were snubbed but jlo isn’t one of them imo
I couldn’t agree more. I still don’t understand where or how this Oscar buzz for JLo got started – and I’m a fan. Her performance was good – good for her acting range but let’s not start this “she was robbed” narrative.
One look at Lupita’s performance tells you who really got robbed.
I read the article and what stood out for me more, was her saying “let’s be real” about ARod being so familiar with strip clubs. Like, she’s saying she is “OK” with that even though a little later, she admits she was surprised he knows so much about strip clubs. Yeah, the Oscar is the least of her worries. She is getting married to ARod soon.
Snubbed implies she was deliberately left out even though her performance was stellar, it was not. She wasn’t snubbed, it was an ok performance for an ok movie.
If anyone let people down, it’s the racist Silent Gen voters. Seriously, they interviewed a woman in her 90s for the brutally honest ballots, can you say out of touch? Anyway, lowest viewership ever speaks volumes. The Oscars needed JLo not the other way around.
She was not snubbed, it was good but not OSCAR worthy. I think people were just shocked to see she could do more than the bland romcoms she’s been doing for years and someone somewhere started the “oscar-worthy” comment and the media bought it and ran with it as it is click bait and obviously both JLO and her team bought into it too. No doubt her team gets plenty of perks with or without an Oscar. There is not one person I know who saw it and thought it was a snub. But boy goes to show how despite her success and other accolades she is thirsty for Oscar, needs even more! I would have preferred for her to say “just makes me want to continue to do better work, take or make better roles for myself and work harder”.
I thought it was a terrifically entertaining movie. JLo was incandescent. You just couldn’t take your eyes off of her. I don’t know if she deserved the Oscar because I didn’t see all the nominated performances, but hell yeah she deserved a nomination. It was really a remarkable performance. I am glad she came back and slayed it at the Super Bowl half time. Showed the Oscars what they are missing. I hear their ratings were down again for the umpteenth year in a row.
Incandescent?
Jl lo has GAME – no doubt. HST she was also just playing a version of herself.
I didn’t see Hustlers but I saw Marriage story and in my humble opinion, Laura’s performance wasn’t Oscar worthy. Stil I don’t mind Jennifer Lopez being upset, since she’s a pain in the *#ss.