While it seems like 2021 has been the busiest year so far for JLo, let’s take it back to almost exactly a year ago. Award season was in full effect, with parties and shows, and stars donning their best to thank all the people in their lives for a variety of industry awards all leading up to the big one, the Oscars. Imagine being the name on almost every major critics notecards on who that season’s front runners are, having a viral sans-makeup cover on GQ, and being told left and right that that coveted Oscar nomination was within your grasp…and then being completely shut out.
“I was talking about this the other day. [My production partner] Elaine [Goldsmith-Thomas] made a post where she listed all the things I had been nominated for and won that season,” she tells Allure for the March 2021 cover. “And when it came to the Oscars, it was so obviously absent. It was a sting.”
“I was like, ‘Okay, when you’re supposedly in everybody else’s mind supposed to be nominated and you’re not, what does that mean? Is it really real? Are the other ones real and this one isn’t?’ It came to a point where I was like, ‘This is not why I do this. I don’t do this to have 10 Oscars sitting on my mantel or 20 Grammys.’”
The snub revealed just how much work Latina, Black, and other marginalized women have to do in order to be seen as “worthy” of accolades afforded to mainly men, and some white women, for simply just telling a story.
“I started training for Hustlers in January 2019. I went from training for Hustlers to doing Hustlers to going on a tour to doing awards season while filming Marry Me. I remember filming all day and working on the music in my trailer and then doing interviews and then being on the phone with my kids because they had just entered middle school. I remember being on the phone with Emme, telling her to do two hours of homework, and then getting on with Max and putting him to sleep and then learning my lines for the next day. Then training for Super Bowl rehearsals. And then it was the Super Bowl,” she explained. “It was nonstop for a year. So, after that, I was like, ‘I’m going to rest. For a month.’”
The big game was scheduled one week prior to the Academy Awards show, and many thought the Bronx multi-hyphenated star would be performing at the Super Bowl as a nominee, Lopez stressed that it wasn’t her intention.
“The idea was to show the best of, not just myself as an artist, but the best of women,” Lopez explains. “The best of Latinos. I felt that I represented Latinos, I represented women, and I represented people in my age group in a light that was very positive and strong.”