The Academy Awards were handed out a while ago, and the nominations were given way before that, but some of the snubs apparently still sting. Speaking with Oprah Winfrey as part of her 2020 Vision: Your Life In Focus Tour (which is certainly a name for a thing), Jennifer Lopez revealed that her disappointment over missing out on an Oscar nomination for her role in Hustlers was less about being personally bummed out and more about feeling like she let everyone down—but only because everyone was so confident that she’d get a nomination.
Basically, it sounds like our collective excitement about Jennifer Lopez potentially getting an Oscar nomination got to her a little bit, and if we had all just kept cool and not made a big deal about it, she could’ve just shrugged off the disappointment. “I was a little sad because there was a lot of buildup to it,” she explained, saying there were “so many articles” about how it would be “crazy” if she didn’t get a nomination that she started to believe it would happen. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen, and Lopez described her reaction thusly: “I was like, ‘ouch.’ It was a little bit of a letdown.”
Lopez also explained that some people on her “team” have been with her for over 20 years, and knew they had a lot of hope riding on her getting an Oscar nomination. So, when she didn’t get one, she felt like she let them down. At some point during the disappointing awards season, though, Lopez decided she didn’t need anyone’s validation or for someone to tell her she did a good job to know she did a good job. “You do this because you love it,” she added. “I don’t need this award to tell me I’m enough.” In the end, isn’t the realization that you never really needed an Oscar better than an actual Oscar? No, of course not. Who wouldn’t want an Oscar? But still, it seems like a positive lesson to take away from all of this.