LOS ANGELES—After a movie year often light on crowds, the Academy Awards named an unabashed crowd-pleaser, the deaf family drama CODA, best picture Sunday, handing Hollywood’s top award to a streaming service for the first time.
Sian Heder’s CODA, which first premiered at a virtual Sundance Film Festival in winter 2021, started out as an underdog but gradually emerged as the Oscars’ feel-good favorite. It also had one very deep-pocketed backer in Apple TV+, which scored its first best picture Academy Award on Sunday, less than three years after launching the service.
It also handed another near-miss defeat to Netflix, the veteran streamer that for years has tried vainly to score best picture. Its best chance, Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog, came in with a leading 12 nominations.
But CODA rode a wave of goodwill driven by its cast including Marlee Matlin, Troy Kotsur and Daniel Durant. It’s the first film with a largely deaf cast to win best picture. CODA managed that despite being one of the least-nominated films with only three coming into Sunday. Not since 1932’s Grand Hotel has a movie won best picture with fewer than four nods.
Earlier, a 94th Academy Awards that steadily maintained a buoyant spirit was rocked by an unbelievable exchange after Will Smith took offense to a joke made by Chris Rock about his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.
After Rock joked to Smith that he was looking forward to a sequel to G.I. Jane, Smith stood up from his seat near the stage, strode up to Rock and slapped him. After sitting back down, Smith shouted at Rock to “keep my wife’s name out of your (expletive) mouth.” When Rock, who joked about Jada Pinkett Smith while hosting the Oscars in 2016, protested that it was just a G.I. Jane joke, Smith repeated the same line.
“That was the greatest night in the history of television,” Rock said, before awkwardly returning to presenting best documentary, which went to Questlove’s Summer of Soul (…or When the Revolution Was Not Televised).
The moment shocked the Dolby Theatre audience and viewers at home. At the commercial break, presenter Daniel Kaluuya came up to hug Smith, and Denzel Washington escorted him to the side of the stage. The two talked and hugged and Tyler Perry came over to talk as well.
Smith, who plays Venus and Serena Williams’s father in King Richard, later in the show won best actor, his first Oscar. It meant Smith again took the stage shortly after what seemed likely to be one of the most infamous moments in Academy Awards history.
Smith’s acceptance speech vacillated between defense and apology.
“Richard Williams was a fierce defender of his family,” Smith said in his first remarks. He continued: “I’m being called on in my life to love people and to protect people and to be a river to my people.”
Smith shared what Washington told him: “At your highest moment, be careful because that’s when the devil comes for you.”
Ultimately, Smith apologized to the academy and to his fellow nominees.
“Art imitates life. I look like the crazy father” said Smith. “But love will make you do crazy things.”
Up until that moment, the show had been running fairly smoothly. Ariana DeBose became the first Afro-Latina to win an Academy Award for supporting actress, while Troy Kotsur became the first deaf actor to win an acting award.
Jane Campion won the Oscar best director for The Power of the Dog, her open-plains psychodrama that twisted and upended western conventions. Campion, who had been the first woman ever twice nominated in the category (previously for 1993’s The Piano), is only the third woman to win best director. It’s also the first time the directing award has ever gone to women in back-to-back years, after Nomadland filmmaker Chloé Zhao won last year.
Best actress went to Jessica Chastain, who also won her first Oscar. Chastain won for her empathetic portrayal of the televangelist Tammy Faye in The Eyes of Tammy Faye, a movie she also produced. The award was presented by Anthony Hopkins, who last year was absent when he surprisingly won best actor in that ceremony’s final award.
After record-low ratings and a pandemic-marred 2021 show, producers this year turned to one of the biggest stars around—Beyoncé—to kick off an Oscars intended to revive the awards’ place in pop culture. After an introduction from Venus and Serena Williams, Beyoncé performed her King Richard nominated song, “Be Alive,” in an elaborately choreographed performance from a lime-colored, open-air stage in Compton, where the Williams sisters grew up.
Hosts Wanda Sykes, Amy Schumer and Regina Hall then began the telecast from the Dolby Theatre.
The first broadcast award went to Ariana DeBose, who became the first openly LGBTQ actor and first Latina to win best supporting actress. Her win came 60 years after Rita Moreno won for the same role in the 1961 original West Side Story. DeBose thanked Moreno for leading the way for “tons of Anitas like me.”
“You see an openly queer woman of color, an Afro-Latina, who found her strength and life through art. And that is, I think, what we’re here to celebrate,” said DeBose. “So if anyone has ever questioned your identity or you find yourself living in the gray spaces, I promise you this—there is indeed a place for us.”
Later, Kotsur became the first male deaf actor to ever win an acting Oscar, and joined his CODA costar Marlee Matlin as the only deaf actors to win an Academy Award. He received a standing ovation while many in the Dolby gave the Deaf clap, waving both hands in the air.
“This is for the Deaf community, the CODA community and the disabled community,” said Kotsur, signing from the stage. “This is our moment.”
Encanto, the Disney hit propelled by its chart-topping soundtrack, won best animated film. Lin-Manuel Miranda, who penned the film’s hit songs, missed the ceremony after his wife tested positive for Covid-19. Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s three-hour Japanese drama Drive My Car, one of the year’s most acclaimed films, won for best international film.
Behind this year’s telecast changes was alarm over the Oscars fast-falling ratings. While drops have been common to all major network award shows, last year’s show attracted only about 10 million viewers, less than half of the 23.6 million the year before. A decade ago, it was closer to 40 million.
Associated Press Writers Lindsey Bahr, Jocelyn Noveck and Andrew Dalton contributed to this report.
Image credits: AP