Michael B. Jordan’s Oscar Win Had Nothing To Do With Timothée Chalamet

Academy Award Winner Michael B. Jordan. It sounds right. It is right. Jordan won his first Oscar on Sunday for Best Actor for his work in Sinners, where he played enigmatic and enthralling twins Smoke and Stack, respectively. In the room at the Dolby Theatre, when Jordan’s name was announced, the applause was deafening. You could feel the love from the actor’s peers. You could feel the joy from the filmmakers, family, press, and every single person from the front row to the mezzanine to the lobbies, where people, who were huddled around screens, erupted in screams, tears, and laughter when Jordan’s name was called. When it was, he sat there stunned, like he couldn’t believe what was happening. Well, it happened. Michael B. Jordan won. And he won for playing two (three if we’re being specific) complex Black men in Ryan Coogler’s wild, bombastic, thrilling, original film about vampires, freedom, love, and Black art. It was an Oscars moment for the history books, one that we’ll look back on with wonder and pride, one that will be replaying in montages and memes for decades to come. And it had absolutely nothing to do with Timothée Chalamet. 

Every year, we do the discourse dance around the nominees for the major acting awards. Every year, there’s the early frontrunners (Chalamet for Marty Supreme), the legacy nominees (Ethan Hawke for Blue Moon), the pleasant surprises (Wagner Moura for The Secret Agent) and the performances from the Best Picture standouts (Jordan and Leonardo DiCaprio for One Battle After Another). This year, Chalamet dominated the discussion early for his unconventional Marty Supreme press tour, in which he blatantly told the world he wanted an Oscar, badly, attested to his own greatness, and performed his ambition loudly, proudly, and clumsily. Sure, it turned some people off, but The Oscars has awarded many a men people don’t like (see: Sean Penn). Closer to Hollywood’s biggest night, Chalamet made comments that pundits swear “lost” him the Oscar. In an interview with Matthew McConaughey during a CNN and Variety town hall, posted on February 24, Chalamet said “no one cares” about ballet and opera and that he wouldn’t want to be involved in art forms with less eyeballs than movies.

The comments ignited a firestorm among fans of these classical art forms and sparked responses from major ballet and opera institutions and performers. The conversation has now turned into something I find unsettling. Due to the backlash, they say, Chalamet’s guaranteed Oscar win was negated, and that Jordan basically won by default because no one wanted to vote for the bratty ballet hater. Not only is this narrative downright disrespectful to Jordan and the brilliance of his performances, it’s blatantly untrue. Oscar voting ended mere days after Chalamet’s comments resurfaced online.

It’s likely that most of the voters had completed their ballots long before Chalamet’s take on ballet broke the internet. You could argue that the grating press tour did hurt Chalamet’s chances, but Marty Supreme also didn’t make the cultural splash – or have the longevity — that director Josh Safdie and co. had hoped. Plus, the Oscars don’t tend to award men this early in their careers, or for performances like the one Timothee gives in Marty Supreme (which I did enjoy). It’s also true that Sinners was just better. Michael B. Jordan was just better. Sinners is a singular piece of art that broke box office records, sparked cultural debates, deep-dive social media takes, and ancestral explorations. The fact is that Michael B. Jordan won an Oscar because he deserved it. And the articles focusing on Chalamet in the aftermath of Jordan’s win are frustrating at best and, at worst, an indication of a racist industry that refuses to believe a Black man could have won on merit alone. 

In the 48 hours since the Oscars, there have been many dissections of “where Timothée went wrong.” The New York Times headline reads, “How Michael B. Jordan Won (and Timothée Chalamet Lost) Best Actor at 2026 Oscars”. Variety’s Oscar postmortem piece headline didn’t even mention Jordan by name. It reads, in part, “How Timothée Chalamet Lost the Race.” Decider went with, “4 Big Reasons Timothée Chalamet Lost That Oscar”. And Vox’s defence of Jordan’s win also inexplicably chooses to centre Chalamet: “The Oscar was never really Timothée Chalamet’s to begin with.” Each of these pieces make Michael B. Jordan’s win about his white counterpart. They belittle MBJ’s achievement — the highest one in his industry — and pull focus from what should be a celebration, not an interrogation of what went “wrong.” Even implying that there is something “wrong” with Jordan’s win is offensive and insolent. You know the age-old Black saying that we have to work twice as hard for half as much? Well, even when you do, like Jordan did playing Smoke and Stack, they’ll try to explain away your excellence. It’s a feeling Black folks in any workplace know all too well. 

Backstage at The Oscars, I overheard the worst take on why Sinners, according to this person, “had the momentum.” The industry insider, not famous, said loudly enough for anyone around to hear it, “The BAFTAs was actually the best thing to happen to Sinners.” The BAFTAs incident, an unfortunately ableist and racist fumble by the BBC in which racial slurs were hurled at members of the Sinners cast, including Jordan, and then left in the show’s broadcast, was a disheartening and frustrating event that caused trauma and infuriating conversations for days. It also occurred a week before Oscar voting ended.

To say that the BAFTAs incident, or Chalamet’s insensitive comments, were at all the reason for Sinners' historic wins, is to say it's unfathomable that a Black film could gain this prestigious acknowledgement on its own. Frankly, it's racist. And it negates all of the work the cast and Coogler did all season to campaign, hustle, and make sure the word got out to Academy voters. They were at every red carpet (I would know, I was there interviewing them) and at every event preaching the gospel of this film. As they should have been. They knew their work was good, and that audiences loved it, and they capitalised on the moment. That’s not luck, that’s smart strategy. 

Say whatever you want about how Chalamet campaigned for an Oscar, but the fact that he did isn’t new, and in fact, Jordan campaigned just as hard. To claim that the only reason MBJ won was by default is to not only ignore that he pulled off timeless performances that were the standout of his career and the absolute best of the year, but it also overlooks that Jordan simply ran a better campaign. He walked carpets with his mom, celebrated his friendship with longtime collaborator Ryan Coogler, and towed the perfect line between confidence and humility that Black men are often forced to. He doesn’t get to yell about his ambition like Chalamet does. But he also didn’t have to. He has the resume to back it up. And the work spoke for itself. 

Sinners was an ambitious undertaking. And for Jordan, he had to carefully construct the subtle differences between his characters — Smoke’s powerful restraint vs. Stack’s charisma and faux bravado — and master the mannerisms of each. The man even manipulated his dimples depending on which twin he was playing. That takes an immeasurable amount of skill. And people are still hung up on someone else “losing” than Jordan’s precision and claiming his rightful spot as an Academy Award winner. The truth is that white men like Chalamet get to behave badly (what he did is nowhere near as bad as the many abusers who are Oscar winners) and still win. All the time. If the Academy wanted to award Chalamet’s performance, they would have. There are really people who think that if Timothée Chalamet had said the right things and was nicer to opera and ballet, he would have had the Oscar locked. To those people, I ask: “Y’all Klan?” 

In his Oscars acceptance speech, Jordan thanked “the people that came before me” before shouting out Sidney Poitier, Denzel Washington, Halle Berry, Jamie Foxx, Forrest Whitaker, and Will Smith. The only other Black performers to win Best Actor or Best Actress at the Academy Awards. It was a moment that gave me chills. Every single one of those actors has been the exception in an industry hell-bent on erasing Black artists and their contributions. Jordan stands on their shoulders, but he — like ancestors who dream for the generation that comes after them — has built on their work and created his own with even more freedom. Alongside Coogler, Jordan is laying a freeing foundation for the next cohort. It makes me emotional thinking about the artists this win will inspire, and the budding Black legends who will climb up onto Jordan’s shoulders. 

“To be amongst those giants, amongst those greats, amongst my ancestors, amongst my guy,” Jordan said. “Thank you, everybody in this room, and everybody at home for supporting me over my career. I feel it. I know you guys want me to do well, and I want to do that because you guys bet on me.” As someone who bet on MBJ stock early, I was weeping at this moment (seriously, I was crying so hard backstage at the Oscars, someone asked me if I was in the Jordan family). Let’s not forget that Jordan also won the Actor Award over Chalamet earlier this month. When Jordan’s name was called then, Viola Davis opened the envelope and yelled, ““You are shining, Harold Loomis!” from Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, August Wilson’s 1984 play. “That line is constantly playing out in my mind,” Davis said to Variety, “because what it encapsulates is someone stepping into their purpose. It gives me goose bumps. And that’s how I felt about Michael B Jordan.” Always listen to Viola Davis.

Let’s put the racism aside for a second. It’s there, and it’s clear. But it’s also unfair to lump in Jordan’s career highlight with Chalamet’s stumbles. I understand that including Chalamet in the headline of this very piece may be feeding into exactly what I’m critiquing, but I also want to make sure as many people as possible read this. And the sad truth is that Chalamet’s name is trending right now alongside Jordan’s. That’s a problem I can’t fix, but I can say with my full chest that Michael B. Jordan earned his Oscar. Period. 

For decades in this industry, from childhood roles like Hard Ball, The Wire and All My Children, to teen staple Friday Night Lights, and formative performances in Fruitvale Station, and the Creed franchise. To groundbreaking blockbusters Black Panther and Sinners, Jordan has been steadily working towards this moment. In 2020, I wrote about Jordan’s Oscar snub for Just Mercy. The headline was “Shouldn’t Michael B. Jordan Have An Oscar Nomination By Now?” in which I argued that Jordan was long overdue for recognition from The Academy. That was six years ago. Now, he’s finally gotten the accolade he deserves. 

We know how the Oscars has treated Black talent in the past. This is the same awarding body that gave history-making awards to Coogler and cinematographer Autumn Duward-Arkapaw while also passing over Sinners for Best Picture for a movie that barely respects its Black women characters. We know that we cannot uphold white-led institutions as the barometer of validation for Black art. But the industry is still set up in such a way that the Oscar-winning title matters. Jordan knows this. He’s been working towards this. Let’s not do him a disservice by eclipsing his moment with a silly controversy that’s not even real. Michael B. Jordan stepped into his purpose Sunday night. Nobody lost that Oscar. It wasn’t anybody else’s to give away. MBJ won. That should be the story.