Best Actress Nominee Michelle Yeoh Deleted An Instagram Post That May Have Violated Academy Rules

Best Actress at the 2023 Oscars is — with all due respect to Michelle Williams, Andrea Riseborough, and Ana de Armas (who was nominated for the wrong movie) — a two-person race between Michelle Yeoh and Cate Blanchett.

The Everything Everywhere All at Once actress believes it’s her time, because a) Michelle Yeoh is an icon and it’s nuts that she doesn’t have an Oscar already, and b) doesn’t Cate Blanchett (who, to be fair, gives an admirably prickly and career-best performance in Tár) have enough trophies already

Yeoh thinks so. On Tuesday, she shared a Vogue article about the lack of diversity at the Academy Awards. (The last non-white Best Actress winner was Halle Berry for 2001’s Monster’s Ball.) There’s also an excerpt about “how it should be noted that [Blanchett] already has two Oscars. A third would perhaps confirm her status as an industry titan but, considering her expansive and unparalleled body of work, are we still in need of yet more confirmation”

The article continues:

“Meanwhile, for Yeoh, an Oscar would be life-changing: her name would forever be preceded by the phrase ‘Academy Award winner,’ and it should result in her getting meatier parts, after a decade of being criminally underused in Hollywood”

Yeoh’s Instagram post has since been deleted, possibly because, as noted by the Daily Beast, it’s “a potential violation of the Academy’s campaign rules. In no. 11, ‘References to Other Nominees,’ Part B reads: ‘any tactic that singles out ‘the competition’ by name or titles is expressly forbidden.’ The words aren’t Yeoh’s, but sharing an article that wonders if Blanchett should win could still be considered a “tactic.” The Academy hasn’t commented yet.

Imagine if Instagram had existed in the 1940s. Humphrey Bogart would have been such a b*tch to Mickey Rooney.