Take a break from getting mad about things that really matter and join me in getting mad about the things that don’t. That’s right the 2025 Oscar noms have been released and Luca Guadagnino’s all-time double header of Challengers and Queer have walked away with nothing.
So no nominations for Queer but what about the queers? That depends on how you feel about Emilia Pérez, the French cishet Mexican trans lesbian film nominated for 13 awards including Karla Sofía Gascón as the first ever out trans performer to be nominated for an Oscar.
While Gascón’s Oscar campaign has included calling LGBTQ critics who didn’t like her movie — including me! — idiots, I can’t help but celebrate this nomination. It’s not even, because I think this kind of first matters all that much. I just know how miserable it is to be a trans person on a film set fighting to turn something truly awful into something just pretty bad. And, frankly, I think every single one of us who has had to do that over the years deserves an Oscar nomination.
Was Gascón more of a supporting actress in her titular movie? Sure. Was Marianne Jean-Baptiste far more deserving for her role in Hard Truths? Yup. But Gascón fought to turn The Assignment into something cis liberals think is groundbreaking and that’s an accomplishment. If anything, she should have also been nominated for Adapted Screenplay.
Beyond Emilia Pérez, I think we’ve all agreed that Wicked counts as a queer film, and out queer actor Cynthia Erivo is definitely worth a shoutout in the Best Actress category. It received a total of 10 nominations including Ariana Grande in the role of famous lesbian Galinda.
Along with Gascón and Erivo, the only other out queer actor nominated today was Colman Domingo for his remarkable work in Sing Sing. And the only other nomination for playing a gay character was Jeremy Strong as real-life gay villain (not the fun kind) Roy Cohn in The Apprentice.
Finally, Conclave got 8 nominations (if you know, you know), Adam Elliot’s Memoir of a Snail snuck into the best animated film category, and Elton John got nominated for best song for “Never Too Late” from his documentary of the same name.
In a year filled with remarkable queer cinema, these nominations are pretty bleak. But at least the next time a trans woman gets nominated for an Oscar — hopefully for a movie that doesn’t make her sing a song about being half man — we’ll be able to celebrate the performer without celebrating a first.
