One Year After Snub, Jennifer Lopez Says ‘Hustlers’ Was ‘So Obviously Absent’ from the Oscars

Zack Sharf
·2 min read
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Lorene Scafaria’s “Hustlers” was a box office smash ($157 million worldwide on a $20 million production budget) turned awards season mainstay, with a Best Feature nomination from the Gotham Awards and several Best Supporting Actress bids for Jennifer Lopez. The singer earned the best reviews of her acting career for playing veteran stripper Ramona Vega, but even landing nominations from the Golden Globes, the SAG Awards, and the Indie Spirits wasn’t enough to get Lopez in the door with the Academy. Lopez was not Oscar nominated in 2020 for “Hustlers,” widely seen by many in the industry as one of the biggest snubs of last year’s awards season. Lopez reflected on the Oscars snub one year later in a recent Allure magazine interview.

“I was talking about this the other day. [My production partner] Elaine [Goldsmith-Thomas] made a post where she listed all the things I had been nominated for and won that season,” Lopez said about the “Hustlers” awards season run. “And when it came to the Oscars, it was so obviously absent. It was a sting.”

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“I was like, ‘Okay, when you’re supposedly in everybody else’s mind supposed to be nominated and you’re not, what does that mean? Is it really real? Are the other ones real and this one isn’t?’” Lopez continued. “It came to a point where I was like, ‘This is not why I do this. I don’t do this to have 10 Oscars sitting on my mantel or 20 Grammys.’”

Shortly after the 2020 Oscars ceremony, Lopez sat down with Oprah Winfrey for the latter’s “2020 Vision: Your Life in Focus Tour” and got candid about not making the cut with the Academy. Lopez said at the time she “felt like I let everyone down a little bit.”

“I was sad. I was a little sad because there was a lot of buildup to it,” Lopez told Oprah. “There were so many articles, I got so many good notices — more than ever in my career — and there was a lot of: ‘She’s going to get nominated for an Oscar, it’s going to happen; if it doesn’t you’re crazy.’ I’m reading all the articles going: ‘Oh my god, could this happen?’ And then it didn’t and I was like: ‘Ouch.’ It was a little bit of a letdown.”

With “Hustlers” behind her, Lopez now has several film projects in development on her slate. The actress will next star opposite Owen Wilson in the Universal Pictures comedy “Marry Me” (delayed to February 2022). Lopez is also attached to film “Shotgun Wedding” opposite Josh Duhamel, who recently replaced Armie Hammer as the film’s lead.

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