Black Women Are Still Fighting Category Gravity in 2026

Twenty-four years after Halle Berry's historic Oscars win, Black women remain trapped in a ‘supporting role win hole’. 

By Sahndra Fon Dufe

On March 24, 2002, Halle Berry became the first Black woman to win the Academy Award for Best Actress. In her tearful acceptance speech for Monster's Ball, she declared the moment was "for every nameless, faceless woman of color that now has a chance because this door tonight has been opened."

Twenty-four years later, the door remains open, but no one has walked through. 

At the 2026 Academy Awards, zero Black women are nominated for Best Lead Actress. Teyana Taylor and Wunmi Mosaku both earned nominations for One Battle After Another and Sinners respectively  in Best Supporting Actress. The pattern holds and Black women appear in awards conversations, but rarely at the center of them. It's a structural issue that the 2026 awards season makes it impossible to ignore.

Since 2002 fifteen Black women have been nominated for Best Actress. The nominees include Viola Davis (twice), Ruth Negga, Andra Day, Angela Bassett, Gabourey Sidibe, Quvenzhané Wallis, and Cynthia Erivo (twice), most recently for Wicked in 2025.

In that same period, ten Black women have won Best Supporting Actress: Whoopi Goldberg (1990), Jennifer Hudson (2007), Mo'Nique (2010), Octavia Spencer (2012), Lupita Nyong'o (2014), Viola Davis (2017), Regina King (2019), Ariana DeBose (2022), and Da'Vine Joy Randolph (2024). The message is clear: Black women are recognized for supporting white narratives more readily than they're trusted to anchor their own.

Taraji P. Henson identified the pattern plainly in the documentary Number One on the Call Sheet. She noted that the industry distributes supporting actress awards to Black women frequently while withholding lead recognition, suggesting voters don't see Black women as capable of carrying films.

The 2026 Best Actress category includes Jessie Buckley (Hamnet), Rose Byrne (If I Had Legs I'd Kick You), Kate Hudson (Song Sung Blue), Renate Reinsve (Sentimental Value), and Emma Stone (Bugonia). All are white. This outcome was constructed through choices made at every level of the industry, from financing down to awards campaigning. And serves as a blotch on an otherwise eventful season. 

From L-R:(Top Row) Whoopi Goldberg, Jennifer Hudson, Mo’Nique, Octavia Spencer (Bottom Row) Lupita Nyong’o, Viola Davis, Regina King, and Ariana DeBose. 

On Recognition Within Limits

Chase Infiniti delivered a critically acclaimed performance in One Battle After Another, appearing in early predictions and earning a Golden Globe nomination in the Best Actress (Musical or Comedy) category. She was widely tipped for an Oscar nomination in Best Actress. Shockingly, she did not receive one.

Instead, the Academy nominated only her co-star Teyana Taylor in the Best Supporting Actress category albeit deservedly on Taylor’s part. The split reveals how category placement functions as a containment strategy. When Black women threaten to occupy leading categories, voters often reclassify them as supporting  or ignore them entirely.

Category confusion has historically plagued Black actresses. In 2016, Viola Davis campaigned in Best Supporting Actress for Fences despite carrying significant screen time and narrative weight, a decision driven by strategic calculation rather than the role's actual function. She won  but the victory reinforced the pattern that Black women win when they stay in their designated lane. According to Black Film Wire, Chase Infiniti's exclusion from the Best Actress category reflects a persistent institutional reluctance to position Black women as the singular emotional and narrative center of prestige films, a barrier that intensifies when performances exist within ensemble casts rather than solo vehicles.

Chase Infiniti’s snubs in the major Award shows are symptomatic of Hollywood’s Black female lead problem. 

Teyana Taylor's Golden Globes win for Best Supporting Actress in One Battle After Another generated significant momentum heading into Oscar nominations. She secured the Academy Award nomination as expected, but her path to victory remains uncertain. Her Critics' Choice loss to Amy Madigan (Weapons) signals voter hesitation, a familiar warning sign for Black actresses. Taylor's role as Perfidia Beverly Hills sparked cultural discourse about representation and the sexualization of Black women in film. Taylor defended the complexity of her character, pointing out that Perfidia's first scene shows her holding a gun to a man's head who calls her "sweet thing"; a moment that reframes her use of sexuality as survival strategy rather than stereotype. The debate itself reveals how Black women's performances are scrutinized differently, their agency questioned even when the text supports it.

Wunmi Mosaku earned her first Oscar nomination for Sinners, playing Annie, a Hoodoo healer and love interest to one of Michael B. Jordan's twin characters. Mosaku, previously known for Lovecraft Country, was shut out of the Golden Globes, making her Oscar nomination a late-breaking development. Late recognition often correlates with momentum building too slowly to convert into wins.

Both Taylor and Mosaku's performances support male-driven narratives. And this pattern repeats across awards history: Black women win for roles that enhance someone else's arc more readily than they win for their own.

Television, Workload Disparity, and Career Momentum

The television landscape operates differently, though not equitably. Black women have secured more leading role recognition in series categories, where ensemble structures and shorter episode commitments lower financial risk for networks and streaming platforms.

At the 2026 Golden Globes, several Black women earned nominations in television categories, though none in the film acting races. The disparity suggests that gatekeepers view Black women as acceptable leads in episodic content but remain reluctant to greenlight them in theatrical features that require $50-100 million budgets and global marketing campaigns.

The film industry still operates on a star system that privileges white actresses as "bankable" leads. When studios finance Black-led films, they often deploy ensemble casts to mitigate perceived risk, a strategy that fragments narrative focus and makes it harder for any single Black actress to emerge as the film's definitive star.

Category placement determines media coverage and voter perception. Leading categories receive more industry attention, more trade advertising, more cultural prestige, and more of everything. By concentrating Black women in supporting categories, the industry limits their visibility while maintaining the appearance of inclusion. Viola Davis has openly spoken about this dynamic, highlighting that despite three Oscar nominations (two in supporting, one in lead), she and other Black actresses work harder for less recognition. 

Janelle James’ Critic Choice Award win for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series was the only major win for a Black women in TV this award season.  Source: Essence Magazine

When Black women are shut out of leading categories, they're denied the institutional power that major awards confer. This affects not just individual careers but the entire ecosystem of Black women filmmakers, producers, and the likes who rely on star power to greenlight projects.

In 2021, Halle Berry herself expressed frustration, noting that she believed Viola Davis or Andra Day would win when both were nominated for stellar performances. Neither did. So, it's become a case of a symbolic door-opening that remained just that. 

What Happens at the 2026 Oscars

If Teyana Taylor wins Best Supporting Actress on March 15, she'll join a long list of Black women whose careers were elevated by supporting wins. If she loses, she'll join an even longer list of Black women whose nominations didn't convert into institutional power. Either way, the larger pattern holds that Black women remain contained in categories that don't threaten the primacy of white actresses.

Wunmi Mosaku's late-breaking nomination positions her as a longshot, but without precursor momentum from the Globes or Critics' Choice, her chances of winning are slim. Her nomination functions more as recognition of Sinners' overall success than as a serious bid for the statuette.

The absence of Black women in Best Actress means that, for the 24th consecutive year since Halle Berry's win, voters will hand the award to a white actress. This reflects who gets access to leading roles in prestige films; who receives studio backing for awards campaigns. It reflects whose stories get told. 

Awards might be symbolic, but symbols have power. And when Black women are systematically excluded from leading categories, the message to financiers is clear, to invest in them as supporting players on the grand scale. As such, Black women directors would struggle to cast Black women leads because studios claim there's no "bankable" star. Black women writers see their scripts optioned but never produced because financiers don't believe audiences will show up for Black women-led films. The cycle reinforces itself into a black hole of monumental proportions, all the while calling for more inclusivity. But it won't come this way. 

The 98th Academy Awards will be held on March 15, 2026, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, airing live on ABC with host Conan O'Brien. Follow Black Film Wire for updates.