Teyana Taylor became one of the most talked-about figures at the 98th Academy Awards on Sunday night not for winning, but for how she lost. The actress, nominated for best supporting actress for her role as the fierce revolutionary Perfidia in Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another, jumped out of her seat the moment Amy Madigan's name was announced as winner, cheering loudly for her fellow nominee. The moment went viral instantly, drawing widespread praise. Then the backlash came.
By Monday, a segment of social media had turned on Taylor, with critics accusing her reaction of being performative or insincere. One person on X wrote that they had known from the first hour of the ceremony that something was off about her. Taylor, 34, responded directly and with force.
In a post on X, she described those who had criticised her as having grown comfortable being sore losers, and said that witnessing genuine sportsmanship unsettles people who have never learned to win or lose with grace. She compared the reaction to holy water touching a demon, and said that clapping for someone else's victory requires something many people never learned: how to win with grace and pure joy, and how to lose with grace, chin up and dignity.
A Tight Race, a Genuine Friendship
The best supporting actress category at this year's Oscars was one of the most competitive in recent memory, with no clear frontrunner heading into the ceremony. Madigan had won the Critics Choice Award and the SAG Actor Award for her role as the parasitic witch Aunt Gladys in Zach Cregger's horror thriller Weapons. Taylor had won the Golden Globe for the same category. BAFTA had gone to Wunmi Mosaku for Sinners. The race split three ways across the major precursors, making Sunday night genuinely unpredictable.
Madigan, 75, made history with the win: she became the actress with the longest gap between a first Oscar nomination and a first victory 40 years and one month, since her first nod for Twice in a Lifetime in 1986. Her performance as Aunt Gladys, which runs to less than 15 minutes of screen time, is only the second time in Oscar history that a performer has won for playing a villain in a horror film, the last being Anthony Hopkins for The Silence of the Lambs in 1992.
In her acceptance speech, Madigan acknowledged the sisterhood that had developed among this year's nominees over the awards season. She described arriving at events on her own while campaigning for Weapons, and said nominees from One Battle After Another and Sinners had welcomed her in. She closed by thanking her husband, actor Ed Harris, with whom she has been married for more than four decades.
One Battle Takes Best Picture
Taylor's night ultimately ended in triumph despite the individual loss. One Battle After Another, the film in which she stars alongside Leonardo DiCaprio and Sean Penn, was named best picture at the end of the ceremony, prompting Taylor to leap on stage with arms around director Paul Thomas Anderson as the cast and crew celebrated.
The film led all winners with six Oscars on the night. Penn won best supporting actor, his third career Oscar. Warner Bros., which distributed both One Battle and Sinners and Weapons, led all studios with 11 awards.
Also Read: Politics Lingers As Warner Bros Dominates 98th Academy Awards
The 98th Academy Awards were held at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood and hosted by Conan O'Brien, who opened the show with a pre-recorded sketch in which he played Aunt Gladys, Madigan's character from Weapons, before delivering a monologue that touched on the night's films, politics, the Iran war and the state of Hollywood.
