After the Oscars, Never Stress About Being Turned Down for a Job Again

I can't stop thinking about the Oscars winners.

Netflix.

We’ve all been there. You ace the first interview, kill the edit test, have a great second interview, and then — the company ghosts. A few months later, you learn someone less experienced got the job. It’s frustrating, and it can even be humiliating. I’m lucky to have had some incredible roles in my 15-year editorial career, so I swear I’m not bitter. But it does sting when it happens. Even though there are about two editorial jobs for every 1,000 journalists (or something terrible like that), it’s hard for me not to internalize it when the company chooses someone else. I’m good! I swear!

That’s why seeing the best actors, singers, and directors lose at the 2025 Academy Awards put things into perspective for me. Sure, the Oscars usually get it wrong. But this year especially pissed me off.

When Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo sang a medley of “Over the Rainbow,” “Home,” and “Defying Gravity,” there wasn’t a dry eye in the audience or at home. It’s hard to believe the Oscars showcased these two women’s incredible talents, only for them to lose in their respective categories.

Zoe Saldaña’s win for Emilia Pérez, a French-made film about Mexicans and transgender people that offended both Mexican and transgender people, wasn’t shocking, but it was disappointing. The movie is not only offensive, it’s objectively bad. Though Saldaña is a great actor, almost no one was good in this movie. And that’s not even getting into her offensive comments about what was at the “heart” of the film. Watch five minutes of Saldaña sing in Emilia Pérez and you’ll scream, THAT’S WHO BEAT ARIANA?! There’s a reason the film was shut out of every LGBTQ+ award.

The most talented, the most deserving, didn’t win.

Erivo’s loss was slightly less painful because Mikey Madison was great in Anora. You can argue that sex sells, and that’s why the film got as much acclaim as it did, but at least Madison has the smarts to publicly express her support for sex workers. The Emilia Pérez cast didn’t say a word about trans rights when transgender people are being persecuted every day. It didn’t help that the film’s transgender actor was found to have written Islamophobic and racist things on Twitter over many years.

Demi Moore was also deserving for her role in The Substance. But if Erivo doesn’t win for Wicked: For Good, the second movie, I’m going to stage a protest. And it’s not like she doesn’t have a problematic past, too. But no one can argue she’s not the most talented.

And I know I’m a theater kid at heart, but Jon M. Chu being shut out of the best director category is actually insane. Do you get where I’m going with this?

Possibly the most offensive win was Adrien Brody as Best Actor in The Brutalist. The 3 hour and 35 minute movie was panned after an editor admitted AI was used to fix Felicity Jones and Adrien Brody's Hungarian accent. Meanwhile, Timothée Chalamet worked for five years to become a better singer than Bob Dylan, who he played in A Complete Unknown. No AI there! Colman Domingo was powerful and magnetic in Sing, Sing, a film I haven’t stopped thinking about since I saw it. Sebastian Stan was so transformative in The Apprentice, he made me want to watch a movie about Donald Trump. And though I didn’t see Conclave, Ralph Fiennes is well, Ralph Fiennes.

Do these actors sit home screaming because Brody, a Roman Polanski and Woody Allen apologist, got up on stage — after throwing GUM AT HIS GIRLFRIEND - and set the record for giving the longest Oscars acceptance speech of all time? Do they cry about how unfair it is Brody got to speak for almost six minutes and said nothing of substance? All after obnoxiously telling the music to shut down and proclaiming, "I've been here before!" All for a role he couldn’t bother to nail Hungarian for? Mikey Madison only got to speak for less than three minutes and she moved to Brighton Beach, Brooklyn to ensure she got the accent right.

Did the person who did the most work, have the most talent, and deserve it the most, win Sunday night? Nope. So next time you don’t get the job or the project or the story, take a deep breath and remember these painful wins. It’ll help.