John Stamos Is Especially Pissed About Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie’s Oscar Snubs

Sure, Ryan Gosling and America Ferrara both said they were "disappointed," but did either of them recreate a scene from Barbie like Stamos? No, they didn't.

By Lauren Tousignant  |  January 24, 2024 | 2:50pm
John Stamos Is Especially Pissed About Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie’s Oscar Snubs
Photo:Instagram/Shutterstock

While the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is very good at fucking up the Oscar nominations, they’re very bad at almost everything else, like not fucking up the Oscar nominations. And they’re specifically very bad at nominating more than one female director in the Best Director category.

Nominations were announced Tuesday morning and they felt especially snubby this year: All Of Us Strangers and The Iron Claw didn’t earn a single nomination; Charles Metlon, arguably the breakout star of the season, didn’t get a nomination for May December; and while Past Lives earned a Best Picture nomination, neither its director, Celine Song, nor its lead actress, Greta Lee, earned nominations in their respective categories. And speaking of female directors and leading actresses…

Barbie basically got almost every nomination except for Margot Robbie as Best Actress and Greta Gerwig as Best Director. And people are pissed! But no one is more pissed than…John Stamos?

On Tuesday night, Stamos posted a little skit with his wife, Caitlin McHugh, using the film’s dialogue to re-imagine a scene between Barbie and Ken. It was cute and silly! “This one goes out to Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie who crafted a film that was both a critical success and a cultural phenomenon, delving into feminist themes through the lens of Barbie and challenging patriarchal norms,” he captioned the video. “This movie not only resonated deeply, but also grossed OVER a billion dollars. Yet, in a twist of irony, both women were snubbed by the Academy. Everyone go re-watch Barbie tonight.”

To save you a Google search, no, Stamos was not involved in the making of Barbie in any way.

This is Gerwig’s second movie that has received a Best Picture nomination (Little Women) without Gerwig earning a Best Director nomination. (Ladybird was nominated for Best Director in 2018.) The Oscars did nominate one female director this year, Justine Triet, for Anatomy of a Fall. But the Academy has only once nominated two women in the Best Director category in the same year—Emerald Fennell for Promising Young Woman and Chloé Zhao for Nomadland in 2021—so I guess they don’t feel they have to do it again this century.

Meanwhile, Ryan Gosling was nominated for Best Supporting Actor, and America Ferrera was nominated for Best Supporting Actress. Barbie also scored nominations for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Costume Design, Best Production Design, and Best Original Score, for both “I’m Just Ken” and “What Was I Made For?” But, by the Oscars’ standards, the boss in charge of all those final decisions, who was responsible for bringing it all to life, is not deserving of recognition.

Gosling, in a statement through his reps, said he was “disappointed” and that “there is no Ken without Barbie, and there is no Barbie movie without Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie, the two people most responsible for this history-making, globally celebrated film.” Ferrera also said she was “incredibly disappointed,” and that “Greta has done just about everything that a director could do to deserve it.” She added: “One of the things about Margot as an actress is how easy she makes everything look. And perhaps people got fooled into thinking that the work seems easy, but Margot is a magician as an actress in front of the screen.”

Gosling arguably had a meatier part than Robbie, and sure, we can talk about how maybe the script didn’t give her enough to work with but still…the fact that nearly everything about this film got nominated except its star and director, feels pretty fucking shitty. Or, as Stamos said, feels like a cruel “twist of irony.”