Oscar Milestones: Jordan Peele and Greta Gerwig Scored Best Director Nominations In The Year’s Most Interesting Category

From the moment that Natalie Portman called out the all-male nominees in the Best Director category at the Golden Globes, all eyes were on the Oscars to see if they would produce a lineup similarly lacking in diversity. The Academy would respectfully like to request that you hold their beer.

Not only did Lady Bird‘s Greta Gerwig become the fifth woman ever to be nominated for Best Director (after Lina Wrtmuller for Seven Beauties in 1976, Jane Campion for The Piano in 1993, Sofia Coppola for Lost in Translation in 2003, and Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker in 2009), but Get Out‘s Jordan Peele became only the fifth black Best Director nominee (after John Singleton for Boyz N the Hood in 1991, Lee Daniels for Precious in 2009, Steve McQueen for 12 Years a Slave in 2013, and Barry Jenkins for Moonlight last year).

In that same Best Director lineup, Guillermo Del Toro (The Shape of Water) at last joins his “three amigos” pals Alejandro Gonzalez Iãrritu and Alfonso Cuaron as the only three Mexicans ever nominated in the category. The three filmmakers acquired the “three amigos” nickname in 2006 when all three were representing Oscar-buzzed films — Iãrritu with Babel, Cuaron with Children of Men, and Del Toro with Pan’s Labyrinth. Only Iñarritu was nominated that year, and he didn’t win, but since then, Cuaron won in 2013 for Gravity and Iñarritu won back-to-back in 2014/15 for Birdman and The Revenant.

Gerwig, Peele, and Del Toro will go up against first-time Best Director nominee Christopher Nolan, who finally broke through into Oscar’s good graces after four previous Directors Guild nominations. And in the category’s surprise, Paul Thomas Anderson got his second career Best Director nod (after There Will Be Blood in 2007) for directing Phantom Thread. PTA is winless in 6 previous Oscar nominations, most of them for writing. His seventh and eighth nominations this year come in Director and Picture — though strangely he was shut out of the Original Screenplay race, where Gerwig and Peele will do battle with Best Director snubbee Martin McDonagh for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. 

Elsewhere on the ballot, history was also being made. In Best Adapted Screenplay, Dee Rees’s nomination for Mudbound is only the second time in history that a black woman has been nominated for writing. The first was Suzanne de Passe for Lady Sings the Blues in 1972.

Mudbound also made history for its Best Cinematography nomination for Rachel Morrison, the first woman ever to be nominated in that category.

AND, Mary J. Blige’s Best Supporting Actress nomination for Mudbound, paired with her Best Original Song nomination for “Mighty River” from that same film, mark the first time anyone has been nominated for acting and songwriting in the same year.

In the acting categories, Octavia Spencer (Supporting Actress nominee for The Shape of Water) and Denzel Washington (Best Actor nominee for Roman J. Israel, Esq.) made history as the first black performers to get Oscar nods in back-to-back years. Last year, Spencer was nominated for Hidden Figures while Washington was nominated for Fences.