Costume Designer Ruth E. Carter Is the First Black Woman to Win Two Oscars
Costume designer Ruth E. Carter made history tonight as she won an Oscar for her work on Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. She became the first Black woman to win two Academy Awards, according to Variety. Her first win was in 2019, for the first Black Panther film, for which she became the first Black Oscar winner for costume design.
Carter, whose illustrious resume includes Do The Right Thing, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, and Selma, is a four-time Oscar nominee, having also earned nods for Malcolm X (1992) and Amistad (1997). As she accepted her award in sunny yellow dress at the Dolby Theater, Carter’s dedicated her win to Black women. “Thank you to the Academy for recognizing the superhero that is a Black woman,” she said.
She also paid tribute to her late mother, who passed just last week at 101 years old. “Chadwick, please take care of mom,” Carter said, in acknowledgement of Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman, who died in 2020 after a private battle with cancer. She added that working on Wakanda Forever, which was deeply affected by Boseman’s passing and told a story of Black women navigating grief, “prepared” her for her mother’s loss.
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Carter triumphed over fellow nominees Catherine Martin (Elvis), Mary Zophres (Babylon), Jenny Beaven (Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris), and Shirley Kurata (Everything Everywhere All at Once). She joins other two-time Black Oscar winners including Denzel Washington, Willie D. Burton, Russell Williams II, and Mahershala Ali, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Her win came shortly after Wakanda Forever star Angela Bassett, who was widely considered the frontrunner for Best Supporting Actress, lost in a major upset to Jamie Lee Curtis.
Read Carter’s full speech below.
“Thank you to the Academy for recognizing the superhero that is a Black woman. She endures, she loves, she overcomes, she is every woman in this film. She is my mother. This past week, my Mabel Carter became an ancestor. This film prepared me for this moment. Chadwick, please take care of mom. Ryan Coogler, Nate Moore, thank you both for your vision. Together, we are reshaping how culture is represented. The Marvel family, Kevin Feige, Victoria Alonzo, Louis D’Esposito, and their arsenal of genius, thank you. I share this with many dedicated artists whose hands and hearts helped manifest the costumes of Wakanda and Talokan. This is for my mother. She was 101.”
Erica Gonzales is the Senior Culture Editor at ELLE.com, where she oversees coverage on TV, movies, music, books, and more. She was previously an editor at HarpersBAZAAR.com. There is a 75 percent chance she’s listening to Lorde right now.
