Oscar Diversity: Asian & AAPI Representation Turn Up Big In Nominations

Asian and Asian American Pacific Islander representation prevailed at this year's Oscar nominations, fueled largely by A24's indie event, Everything Everywhere All at Once with 11 noms . The breakthrough comes in the wake of Parasite 's 6 Oscar noms/4 wins in 2020, and Minari 's six Oscar noms/one win.

Malaysian-born Michelle Yeoh made history as the first Best Actress Asian nominee for Everything Everywhere All at Once . Yeoh played Evelyn Wang in the film, an immigrant laundromat owner, who together with her husband Waymond Wang (Ke Huy Quan) battles across the multiverse for the soul of their daughter, Joy Wang ( Stephanie Hsu ).

Diversity in the the Best Actress category has been slim throughout AMPAS history with Halle Berry the only winner. While hardly a dozen Black women were nominated for Best Actress, there have been just four Latina/Hispanic. This morning also saw the first actress of Cuban descent, Ana de Armas, making waves in the category for Blonde.

Both Quan and Hsu broke through in their respective supporting actor and actress categories for the film, which is the highest grossing movie ever for A24 at $104M WW. In addition the Supporting Actress category counts Thai-born actress Hong Chau from The Whale . For Hsu and Chau, it's the first time that two Asian women have been nominated in a single year in the Best Supporting Actress category. When it comes to Asians and AAPI winning in Best Supporting Actress, those Oscars went to Japanese descent Miyoshi Umeki for 1957's Sayonara and Youn Yuh-jung who became the first Korean actress to be nominated and win an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for 2020's Minari .

While the Best Supporting Actor category throughout the Academy's 95-year history has included such Asian and AAPI nominees as Pat Morita for The Karate Kid, Ken Watanabe for The Last Samurai and Dev Patel for Lion, only Chinese-Cambodian decent performer Haing S. Ngor remains the first and only Asian to ever win an Oscar in the category for 1984's The Killing Fields.

Everything Everywhere All at Once co-director Daniel Kwan (who helmed the movie with Daniel Schneinert) counts nominations in Directing, Original Screenplay and Best Picture. Historically, the directing category counts four Asian/AAPI Oscar winners including Ang Lee (twice, for Brokeback Mountain and Life of Pi ), Bong-Joon Ho (First South Korean to win) for Parasite and Chloe Zhao for Nomadland (first Asian woman).

Everything Everywhere All at Once 's producer Jonathan Wang, who is Taiwanese American, was also recognized in the Best Picture category which has counted winners such as Zhao for Nomadland and Joon-ho and Kwak Sin-ae for Parasite.

Other Asian and AAPI nominees this morning include Chinese born-Canadian Turning Red filmmaker Domee Shi in Best Animated Film category, Shirley Kurata for Best Costume Design for Everything Everywhere All at Once , Judy Chin for Make-up/hairstyling for The Whale, Japanese born-UK scribe Kazuo Ishiguro for Living in Adapted Screenplay ; two of the bandmembers from Everything Everywhere All at Once composers' Son Lux -Rafiq Bhatia and Ian Chang, All That Breathes Indian producer Aman Mann and filmmaker Shaunak Sen in Best Documentary Feature, Indian film producer Guneet Monga and Kartiki Gonsalves in Best Documentary Short for The Elephant Whisperers and Japanese born/American singer-songwriter Mitski who co-wrote Oscar-nominated original song "This Is a Life" with David Byrne and Ryan Lott from Everything Everywhere All at Once. There was also original song "Naatu Naatu," with music by M.M. Keeravaani and lyric by Chandrabose.

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