Both
Michelle Yeoh and
Cate Blanchett are among the frontrunners for the Best Actress Award at the 2023 Oscars. The awards will be announced on March 12.
But now the internet is abuzz with reports that Michelle Yeoh had put up and then deleted an Instagram post in which she had shared an excerpt from an article that mentioned fellow contestant Cate Blanchett having already won the coveted award twice.
The article had been pulled out from Vogue magazine and was titled, ‘It’s Been Over Two Decades Since We’ve Had a Non-White Best Actress Winner. Will That Change in 2023?’
More specifically, what Michelle had excerpted were two paras that mentioned both Cate and herself. One para focused on Cate Blanchett’s two previous Oscars and speculated that a third one would just confirm her status “as an industry titan”. The second para specifically spoke of how winning an Oscar would change Michelle Yeoh’s life and “result in her getting meatier parts,” in the future.
The rules of the Academy Awards are stringent and rule 11 mentions that singling out the competition by name or title is expressly forbidden.
Speculation is rife whether this would go against Yeoh in any way. So far, the Academy does not seem to have taken note of Michelle’s deleted Instagram post.