Cynthia Erivo makes Oscar history with second career Best Actress nomination
Cynthia Erivo made Oscar history on Thursday morning with her Best Actress bid for Wicked. She is now only the second Black female performer to receive multiple bids in this category, after Viola Davis.
Erivo plays Elphaba Thropp, the Wicked Witch of the West, in director Jon M. Chu‘s big-budget adaptation of the beloved Broadway stage musical. Wicked actually marks her second Best Actress mention after Harriet (2019), for which she also earned a Best Song bid for “Stand Up” (cowritten with Joshuah Brian Campbell). Wicked received 10 Oscar nominations this year, including for Erivo’s supporting co-star Ariana Grande.
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Davis was the first to accomplish such a feat, thanks to her double Best Actress Oscar bids for The Help (2011) and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (2020). While she lost both of those contests, she did win the Best Supporting Actress prize for Fences (2016); she also had a prior bid in that race for Doubt (2008).
Erivo’s co-nominees at the this year’s Oscars are Karla Sofía Gascón (Emilia Pérez), Mikey Madison (Anora), Demi Moore (The Substance), and Fernanda Torres (I’m Still Here). See the complete list of 2025 Oscar nominations.
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Marianne Jean-Baptiste (Hard Truths) was on the bubble for a Best Actress bid this year, and had she gotten in, it would have only been the third time in Academy Awards history that there were two nominees in the lineup. The other instances were at the 2021 ceremony with Davis (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom) and Andra Day (The United States vs. Billie Holiday), and at the 1973 gala with Diana Ross (Lady Sings the Blues) and Cicely Tyson (Sounder). These duos lost their respective races to Frances McDormand (Nomadland) and Liza Minnelli (Cabaret).
Jean-Baptiste takes on the role of Pansy Deacon, an antisocial woman who lashes out at everyone around her. She’s a prior Oscar nominee for Secrets & Lies (1996) in Best Supporting Actress, which notably was also written and directed by her Hard Truths filmmaker Mike Leigh.
Elsewhere this awards season, Erivo was feted at the BAFTAs, Critics Choice Awards, Golden Globes, and Screen Actors Guild Awards, while Jean-Baptiste scooped up BAFTA and Critics Choice nods.
Prior to this year, there were 14 other instances where Black women received Best Actress nominations: Dorothy Dandridge for Carmen Jones (1954), Diana Ross for Lady Sings the Blues (1972), Cicely Tyson for Sounder (1972), Diahann Carroll for Claudine (1974), Whoopi Goldberg for The Color Purple (1985), Angela Bassett for What’s Love Got to Do with It (1993), Halle Berry for Monster’s Ball (2001), Gabourey Sidibe for Precious (2009), Viola Davis for The Help (2011), Quvenzhané Wallis for Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012), Ruth Negga for Loving (2016), Cynthia Erivo for Harriet (2019), Viola Davis for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (2020), and Andra Day for The United States vs. Billie Holiday (2020). Berry was the first, and so far the only, such nominee to win.
Find out who wins Best Actress and all of the other categories when the 2025 Oscars ceremony airs live on ABC and streams on Hulu on Sunday, March 2.
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