Helen Mirren advises people to chill about Barbie Oscar snubs

A good portion of awards season is dedicated to deciding what’s been snubbed and if there even is such a thing as a snub in the first place. The chatter feels a little louder this year because the snubs (such as they are) pertain to the biggest film of 2023 and a true cultural sensation (yes: Barbie). But people who have been in the game a while, like Whoopi Goldberg and now Helen Mirren, will tell you that “snubs” aren’t anything to worry about.

“You can’t get upset about things like that, honestly,” Mirren, who served as Barbie’s narrator, recently told Entertainment Tonight. “What is fantastic is that Barbie was the highest-grossing film that Warner Bros. has ever had in their lives and do you remember who won best film of the year before last?”

That question probably doesn’t pertain to the average A.V. Club reader, but it’s likely true about the general population of people who don’t care about the Oscars. (That’s most people, according to the show’s declining ratings.) Lots of people who do care about the Oscars got in a real tizzy about Margot Robbie missing an acting nomination and Greta Gerwig missing the directing nomination. But Robbie, who was nominated as a producer for Barbie’s Best Picture nod, shares Mirren’s perspective. Shrugging off the so-called “snub,” Robbie said Barbie is “bigger than this movie, it’s bigger than our industry,” and proclaimed that the film’s cultural impact is “truly the biggest reward that could come out of all of this.”

Despite all that, Mirren “would have loved to see” Gerwig get a Best Director nomination, and thinks she should have won. “It’s so difficult, it’s not a running race, you know, you can’t—Christopher Nolan’s work on Oppenheimer was spectacular, extraordinary. But for me, Greta’s work was so out there, it was so brave, it was something we’d never seen before,” she told ET. “I just love the fact that the audience responded the way they did.”

Speaking with Forbes ahead of accepting a lifetime achievement award at the American Cinematheque Awards, Mirren said that the rise of female-led films like Barbie “means a huge amount. I think it’s so exciting and role models are so important for young people. You have to see people like you—your race, your gender—on the screen or behind the camera, to realize that you can do it.” She added, “So, having a film like Barbie be the success that it has been teaches studios that yes, women can make incredibly successful films and young girls who are six, seven, eight [years old]—playing with their Barbies thinking, Oh, maybe I’ll be a film director. So, it’s great.”