This year’s batch of Oscars nominees were a fairly predictable bunch, which makes Bradley Cooper’s exclusion from the Best Director category something of a head-scratcher. Cooper, who is clearly on the Clint Eastwood career path, seemed destined to earn a nod for his directorial debut, A Star Is Born. The fact that he didn’t proves that the Academy still has some surprises up its sleeve–and the power to humble even the mightiest A-listers, like B-Coops himself. As THR reports, Cooper sat down with Oprah Winfrey for an installment of her SuperSoul Conversations series, where the actor-turned-director revealed that he felt a very human emotion upon realizing he was not nominated for Best Director. That feeling was “embarrassment”–one us lowly normals know all too well.
While Winfrey was surprised he wasn’t nominated for Best Director, Cooper says he wasn’t:
I’m never surprised about not getting anything. But it’s funny you ask this, because I’ve thought about this. I was with my friend at a coffee shop in New York City, and I looked down at my phone, and Nicole [Caruso, Cooper’s publicist] had texted me congratulations on these other things but didn’t tell me the bad news. And I went, ‘Oh, wow.’ And the first thing I felt was embarrassment, actually. Think about it. I felt embarrassed that I didn’t do my part.
Apparently A Star Is Born’s eight measly Oscars nominations weren’t enough to make Cooper, who was nominated for Best Actor (please let them use the pee scene in his reel), feel like he did an okay job. Despite not earning a Best Director nod, the film was nominated in several other key categories, including Best Picture, Best Original Song (obviously), and Best Actress for Lady Gaga’s film “debut”. (As if we’d all forgotten she was in that Sin City sequel. Lady, please.)
You can watch Winfrey’s full interview with Cooper when SuperSoul Conversations airs on February 16 at 8 pm on OWN.