There’s no bad blood between Best Actress Oscar winners Michelle Yeoh and Emma Stone—despite what some viewers may have thought.
Shortly after the 96th Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday, fans speculated that Stone had snubbed Yeoh onstage while accepting the Oscar for Actress in a Leading Role. The awkward snafu saw Stone seemingly pass over Yeoh, who carried the golden statuette, to embrace Jennifer Lawrence, who appeared to grab the award from Yeoh to hand to Stone.
“Emma Stone passed award presenter Michelle Yeoh, and Jennifer Lawrence handed her the award as if she were the presenter herself,” one user tweeted.
But Yeoh put those rumors to rest with a new Instagram post, in which she explained the situation.
“Congratulations Emma!! I confused you , but I wanted to share that glorious moment of handing over Oscar to you together with your best friend Jennifer,” the Everything Everywhere All at Once star wrote, clarifying that she had encouraged Lawrence to pass the Oscar to Stone. “She reminded me of my Bae Jamie Lee Curtis ♥️✨ always there for each other!! 😘😘😘.”
In addition to hugging during the ceremony, Stone and Yeoh were photographed embracing and posing for a group photo together backstage.
Stone’s Best Actress win—her second in the category, following her win in 2017 for La La Land—recognized her performance as Bella Baxter in Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things.
“The women on this stage, you are all incredible, and the women in this category—Sandra, Annette, Carey, Lily—I share this with you. I’m in awe of you. It has been such an honor to do this all together, and I hope we continue to do more together,” she said in her acceptance speech. “The other night I was panicking … that maybe something like this could happen, and Yorgos told me, ‘Please take yourself out of it’—and he was right, because it’s not about me. It’s the team that came together to make something better than the sum of its parts. That’s the best part about making movies, is all of us together.”
As an associate editor at HarpersBAZAAR.com, Chelsey keeps a finger on the pulse on all things celeb news. She also writes on social movements, connecting with activists leading the fight on workers' rights, climate justice, and more. Offline, she’s probably spending too much time on TikTok, rewatching Emma (the 2020 version, of course), or buying yet another corset.
