2023 Academy Awards: Oscars 2023 Highlights: ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ Wins Seven Academy Awards, Including Best Picture (Published 2023) (2024)

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‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ is the big winner at the Oscars.

The Daniels, the young filmmaking duo behind the racially diverse “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” won Oscars for their original screenplay and directing. (The Daniels is an oh-so-cool sobriquet for Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. They are both 35.) The film, which received a field-leading 11 nominations, also won Oscars for film editing, best actress and best supporting actor and actress, with Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan and Jamie Lee Curtis honored for their performances.

“Ladies, don’t let anybody ever tell you that you are ever past your prime,” Yeoh, 60, said when accepting the best actress Oscar. “Never give up.” She was the first Asian woman to receive the award.

Quan’s win provided the Academy Awards with a hall-of-fame comeback story: After early success in movies like “The Goonies” and “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” his acting career grew so cold that he turned to stunt work. “Dreams are something you have to believe in,” Quan said as tears streamed down his face and A-list attendees gave him a standing ovation. “I almost gave up on mine. To everyone out there, please keep your dreams alive.”

Curtis was also in tears by the time she reached the fiery conclusion of her acceptance speech. “To all of the people who have supported the genre movies that I have made for all these years,” she said, “the thousands and hundreds of thousands of people, we just won an Oscar together!”

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences spread nominations remarkably far and wide this year. Two blockbuster sequels, “Avatar: The Way of Water” and “Top Gun: Maverick,” made the best picture cut. So did the little-seen art films “Triangle of Sadness,” “Women Talking” and “Tár.” Voters also made room for a musical (“Elvis”) and a memory piece (“The Fabelmans”).

In some ways, spreading nominations widely reflected the jumbled state of Hollywood. No one in the movie capital seems to know which end is up, with streaming services like Netflix hot then not, and studios unsure about how many films to release in theaters and whether anything but superheroes, sequels and horror stories can succeed. Over the weekend, “Scream VI” was the top movie at the North American box office, with an estimated $44.5 million in ticket sales.

First-time nominees filled 16 of the 20 acting slots, with new stars like Austin Butler (“Elvis”), Barry Keoghan (“The Banshees of Inisherin”), Brian Tyree Henry (“Causeway”), Paul Mescal (“Aftersun”) and Stephanie Hsu (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”) honored for breakthrough roles.

But first-time acting nominations also went to Hollywood stalwarts like Curtis, Yeoh and Brendan Fraser. To some degree, the inclusion of Quan, Curtis, Fraser and Yeoh was seen as redemption for Hollywood: All had somehow been cast to the side at some point over their careers.

An overcome Fraser, who won the Oscar for best actor for his performance as an obese professor in “The Whale,” thanked Darren Aronofsky, the film’s director, “for throwing me a creative lifeline.”

The academy was also trying to balance old and new in the Oscars ceremony itself. The academy’s chief executive had promised a return to the polished, glamorous Oscar ceremonies of the past to recover from last year’s chaotic telecast, when an angry Will Smith walked onstage and slapped Chris Rock. In a change from last year, when eight categories were scuttled to a nontelevised portion, all 23 Oscars were handed out live on air.

As host, Jimmy Kimmel arrived on the Oscars stage by parachute, moments after a pair of “Top Gun”-style fighter jets flew over the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles at 345 miles per hour. He then breezed through a self-assured monologue that left the A-listers seated before him cheering in support. He teased Steven Spielberg — gently — for his lack of recreational drug use and Fraser and Quan for once appearing together in “Encino Man.” It was the kind of affable ribbing that once made Billy Crystal the king of the Oscar M.C.’s.

“And if any of you get offended by a joke and decide you want to come up here and get jiggy with it? It’s not going to be easy,” Kimmel said, addressing last year’s slap without directly mentioning Smith. He then joked that people like Michael B. Jordan, the “Creed” star, and Pedro Pascal, who plays the title role in “The Mandalorian,” were prepared to intervene.

“Seriously, the academy has a crisis team in place,” Kimmel said. “If anything unpredictable or violent happens during the ceremony, just do what you did last year — nothing. Maybe even give the assailant a hug.”

As expected, “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” received the Oscar for best animated feature, and “Navalny” was honored as best documentary. Less anticipated was Ruth Carter’s win for her “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” costume design. (Most awards handicappers had predicted victory for the “Elvis” costume designer Catherine Martin. Carter also won for “Black Panther” in 2019.)

The #OscarsSoWhite outcries from 2015 and 2016, prompted by all-white slates of acting nominees, continue to reverberate at the academy, which has been trying to diversify its membership by race, gender and nationality. Nearly 50 percent of the academy’s most recent class of new members came from overseas. About 25 percent of the academy’s total membership of 10,000 now comes from outside the United States.

But the academy was criticized this year for not nominating any women in the best director category. For decades, women and people of color were almost entirely excluded from the directing race. In 2021, for the first time, two women were nominated: Chloé Zhao (“Nomadland”) and Emerald Fennell (“Promising Young Woman”), with Zhao winning. Last year, Jane Campion (“The Power of the Dog”) won the Oscar for directing.

This year, Sarah Polley (“Women Talking”) was left out even though her film was nominated for best picture. (Polley won for her adapted screenplay.) “I give up,” Patty Jenkins, whose directing credits include “Wonder Woman” and “Monster,” told Variety on Saturday about women being shut out of the category. “It’s still going to take a long ways to go. It’s going to take a lot more to really see truly more diverse awards.”

The internationalization of the academy was on display among this year’s directing nominees. The Swedish filmmaker Ruben Östlund (“Triangle of Sadness”) and the British-born Martin McDonagh (“The Banshees of Inisherin”) were honored. Joining them were Todd Field (Tár) and the Daniels. Filling out the best director category was Spielberg — a director who was once part of that New Hollywood crew and is now a Hollywood elder statesman with nine total nominations for directing, this one for “The Fabelmans.”

The academy emphasized that the ceremony would feel modern — part of an urgent effort to make the telecast more relevant to young people. The 2022 show drew 16.6 million viewers, the second-worst turnout on record after the pandemic-affected 2021 telecast. If the Nielsen ratings do not improve, the academy faces a financial precipice: Most of its revenue comes from the sale of broadcasting rights to the show. Hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake. (The most-viewed Oscars telecast was in 1998, when 57.2 million people watched “Titanic” win the trophy for best picture.)

Big musical stars, including Rihanna and Lady Gaga, sang their nominated songs; Lenny Kravitz performed during the “In Memoriam” segment. The best song Oscar went to “Naatu Naatu” from the Indian film “RRR.” The nominee pool for best picture had never before included more than one billion-dollar ticket seller, according to box office databases, and this year there were two. “Top Gun: Maverick” collected $1.5 billion, and “Avatar: The Way of Water” took in $2.3 billion. (Viewership tends to increase when popular films are nominated.)

In another change, the red carpet was not red: Stars walked a champagne-colored rug, breaking with a 62-year tradition. The choice was made as part of an overhaul of the preshow spectacle, which, for the first time, was managed by members of the Met Gala’s creative team. In the days leading up to the Oscars, another in a series of rainstorms soaked Los Angeles, so much so that the academy sent an alert to the news media on Wednesday warning that it may “need to clear the carpet at a moment’s notice.” In the end, the weather cooperated, and it was a sunny 63 degrees.

Why were Oscar nominees wearing blue ribbons? They stand #WithRefugees.

Blanchett, one of the agency’s Goodwill ambassador, said that when she met with refugees in Lebanon, Jordan, Bangladesh and Britain, she was struck by the similarities she shared with them rather than their differences.

“What I love about film is the way it draws us into compelling human themes to uncover the connective tissue that binds us all,” Blanchett said in a statement.

The pins were also present at the BAFTAs, where Colin Farrell, Daryl McCormack and Paul Mescal, among others, sported the ribbons.

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Brendan Fraser wins best actor.

In an emotional speech overflowing with underwater metaphors, Fraser thanked A24, the studio behind the film, along with his fellow nominees.

“Gentlemen, you laid your whale-sized hearts bare so that we could see into your souls like no one else could do,” Fraser said.

Fraser was nominated alongside Austin Butler for “Elvis,” Colin Farrell for “The Banshees of Inisherin,” Paul Mescal for “Aftersun” and Bill Nighy for “Living.”

The portrayal set off a debate about fat-shaming and the movies. The Times columnist Roxane Gay wrote in December that Fraser’s “performance makes him a strong contender for all the major awards, and that’s a shame — not because he doesn’t deserve them but because what’s also being rewarded is such a demeaning portrayal of a fat man.”

Fraser took pains to explain that his work was based on consultations with members of the Obesity Action Coalition. He spoke to The Times of “the constant harangue that people who live in oversized bodies have to endure in their daily life,” adding, “They become overlooked by doctors, they don’t get the same attention. That really does play at your confidence.”

And the actor could relate to confidence being undermined. He found stardom quickly with mainstream hits like the 1992 films “Encino Man” and “School Ties.” But he seemed to disappear from the screen in the 2000s. As the Projectionist columnist Kyle Buchanan chronicled in a recent profile, Fraser was dealing with “a costly divorce, injuries incurred from years of grueling stunt work, and a sexual assault that he said was committed by the former Golden Globes boss Philip Berk and that caused him to withdraw from the spotlight.” (Berk has denied the accusation.)

In 2020, the director Darren Aronofsky came across an old movie trailer featuring Fraser, a serendipitous moment that led to his casting in “The Whale” and, ultimately, to the Oscar. (His co-star Hong Chau was also nominated but lost to Jamie Lee Curtis of “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” Fraser thanked Chau in his speech, saying that “only whales can swim at the depths of the talent of Hong Chau.”)

Throughout awards season Fraser was considered the favorite, in part because of his humble reaction to the turn his life has taken. He told Buchanan, “I’ll take nothing for granted, knowing how far-reaching this journey has been.”

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Reggie, from your mouth to the studios’ ears.

It was a historic night for Asian actors.

So, later Sunday night, when Michelle Yeoh, one of Quan’s co-stars, captured the best actress Oscar, her win powered more than one significant breakthrough. Yeoh became the first Asian best actress winner in Oscars history, and the first Malaysian to win an Oscar; and the pair of triumphs by Yeoh and Quan marked the first time that more than one performer of Asian descent won an Oscar in a single year.

“For all the little boys and girls who look like me watching tonight, this is a beacon of hope and possibilities,” Yeoh said when accepting her best actress award. “This is proof that dreams — dream big, and dreams do come true.”

“This is history in the making,” she added. “Thank you.”

A total of four actors of Asian ancestry were recognized with Oscar nominations this year, a record number for Asian performers. In addition to Yeoh and Quan, Stephanie Hsu, who also stars in “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” was up for supporting actress nomination, as was Hong Chau of “The Whale.”

In the run-up to the Oscars, an analysis by The New York Times found that Asian stars have rarely been part of the Academy Awards. Of the 1,808 acting award nominees, only 23 could be identified as Asian; coming into Sunday, only four had ever won.

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Oscars pay tribute to film industry fixtures who died.

Paired with a performance by Lenny Kravitz, the carousel of memorials included prolific actors (Irene Papas and Raquel Welch among them); onscreen mobsters (Ray Liotta, James Caan); and industry veterans known for their off-camera work (including Tom Whitlock, who co-wrote two songs that helped elevate the 1986 “Top Gun” into a pop-culture phenomenon).

In a rare joke about the In Memoriam segment, the host of the ceremony, Jimmy Kimmel, asked viewers to get out their phones and “vote if you think Robert Blake should be part of the In Memoriam montage,” referring to the actor who was put on trial for the murder of his wife and was acquitted. (The Academy did not include him in the montage.)

‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ wins best picture.

“All Quiet on the Western Front” had been thought to be a potential dark horse as a favorite among older voters in the academy who found “Everything Everywhere” too head-spinning for their taste. But in the end, the eccentric movie, which was a hit among both critics and audiences, continued its hot streak and won big.

Earlier in the evening, Ke Huy Quan won for supporting actor; Jamie Lee Curtis won for supporting actress; Michelle Yeoh won for best actress; Paul Rogers won for editing; and the Daniels won for best director and original screenplay. With the addition of best picture, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” became the film with the most marquee wins in Oscar history. It won seven Oscars in total.

“This is for my dad, who like so many immigrant parents, died young,” Jonathan Wang, a producer of the movie, said in accepting the award. “And he is so proud of me, not because of this. But because we made this movie with what he taught me to do, which is, no person is more important than profits, and no one is more important than anyone else. And these weirdos right here supported me in doing that.”

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Michelle Yeoh makes history as the first Asian best actress winner at the Oscars.

This was her first Oscar nomination and win after a venerated career that toggled between action-heavy roles (“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”) and performances of regal self-containment (“Crazy Rich Asians”). Tonight, she beat out Andrea Riseborough (“To Leslie”), Cate Blanchett (“Tar”), Michelle Williams (“The Fabelmans”) and Ana de Armas (“Blonde”).

Yeoh’s biggest competition came from Blanchett, who won the best actress trophy at the BAFTAs but saw her path to the winner’s circle narrow after Yeoh’s historic win at the SAG Awards, where she became the first Asian star to win the guild’s best actress prize for a film.

All season long, Yeoh has spoken of the obstacles she and other Asian performers have faced in Hollywood. After the Oscar nominations were unveiled in January, she told The Times, “Of course, I’m over the moon, but I feel a little sad because I know we know there have been amazing actresses from Asia that come before me, and I stand on their shoulders.” She added, “I hope this will shatter that frigging glass ceiling to no end, that this will continue, and we will see more of our faces up there.”

Here’s the full text of her acceptance speech on Sunday:

Thank you. Thank you. For all the little boys and girls who look like me watching tonight, this is a beacon of hope and possibilities. This is proof that dreams — dream big, and dreams do come true. And ladies, don’t let anybody tell you you are ever past your prime. Never give up.

I wouldn’t be standing here tonight without the Daniels [directors of “Everything Everywhere”], without A24, without my amazing cast and crew, without everyone who was involved with “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” I have to dedicate this to my mom, all the moms in the world. Because they are really the superheroes. And without them, none of us will be here tonight. She’s 84. And I’m taking this home to her. She’s watching right now in Malaysia, K.L., with family and friends. I love you guys. I’m bringing this home to you. And also my extended family in Hong Kong, where I started my career. Thank you for letting me stand on your shoulders, giving me a leg up so that I can be here today. And to my godchildren, to my sisters, all of them, to my brothers. Oh God. To my family, thank you. Thank you.

Thank you to the Academy. This is history in the making. Thank you.

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I know. Not the hot-dog fingers.

I'm beaming!

Or something. She was teary as she greeted her, though. But why not just have let Halle Berry do this category on her own?

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The Daniels become the third directing duo to win an Oscar.

“Everything Everywhere All at Once,” which premiered last April, was a hit with audiences and critics alike. Although the Daniels gleefully incorporate hot-dog fingers and everything bagels into their head-spinning, world-jumping movie, which they also wrote, the film is, at its core, about family and its many complications. It stars Michelle Yeoh as a laundromat owner at odds with everyone from the I.R.S. to her loving husband and rebellious daughter.

The Daniels, as they are collectively known, came into the night as heavy favorites. Sunday’s win adds another honor to an impressive awards-season run for the Daniels, who also took top prizes at the Directors Guild Awards and the Critics Choice Awards.

Both of the Daniels used their stage time to thank their parents.

“Thank you for not squashing my creativity when I was making really disturbing horror films or really perverted comedy films or dressing in drag as a kid, which is a threat to nobody,” Scheinert said.

“We are all products of our context. We are all descendants of something and someone. And I want to acknowledge my context,” Kwan added. “My immigrant parents, my father who fell in love with movies because he needed to escape the world and thus passed that love of movies onto me. My mother, who was a creative soul, who wanted to be a dancer, an actor and singer, but could not afford the luxury of that life path, and then gave it to me. My incredible brothers and sisters, who helped me survive the chaos of childhood.”

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‘Naatu Naatu’ from ‘RRR’ wins best original song.

In the Telugu-language film, set in 1920s colonial India, the song figures in a marathon dance-off that was filmed in front of the Mariinsky Palace in Ukraine before the Russian invasion. M. M. Keeravani, the song’s composer, used duffs, an Indian skin drum, for the main beats, adding in mandolins for the melody. The lyricist Chandrabose, who is known for his work in Tollywood, that is, Telugu cinema, has said he wrote most of the words in about an hour.

“I grew up listening to the Carpenters, and now here I am with the Oscars,” Keeravani said in his acceptance speech, singing a rendition of the group’s song “Top of the World” but with lyrics about his joy at winning the award.

What does “Naatu Naatu” mean? As Keeravani explained to The Times, “Naatu means ethnic: something we own ourselves, something completely unique, something that belongs to one’s own identity. That is Naatu. Naatu means country. It’s a song from the countryside. It’s about everything that happened in our own country, in our own village; something you cherish for life.”

The Oscars ceremony included a performance of the song, with its rapid-kick choreography and roguish suspender snapping.

The song beat others from “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and “Tell It Like a Woman.”

Rihanna’s “Black Panther” hit, “Lift Me Up,” was also a front-runner for the award. The hymnlike ballad with a prominent string section was the pop star’s first solo song in years, drawing significant attention. On Sunday, the pop star’s performance ended with a standing ovation.

For “Top Gun,” Lady Gaga performed “Hold My Hand,” an emotional power ballad. Written by Gaga and BloodPop, the song’s music video featured the pop star in classic “Top Gun” apparel: a white tank top, a dog tag necklace and aviator sunglasses.

The nominated song from “Everything Everywhere” was “This Is a Life,” by the indie-rock band Son Lux, featuring Mitski and David Byrne. The song is played in the end credits, and the lyrics — “I choose you, and you choose me” — speak to core messages in the film.

The original song nomination was the only nod for “Tell It Like a Woman,” which features seven short stories with female protagonists, some of them fictional and some inspired by true events. Written by Diane Warren, the song, “Applause,” would have been a major victory for the songwriter after 13 previous nominations in the same category and no wins. She did take home a Governors Award earlier in the season, the Oscar equivalent of a lifetime achievement honor. At that ceremony, held in November, she said, “I’ve waited 34 years to say this: I’d like to thank the academy!”

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