It has been a whirlwind of a Thursday morning for costume designer Ruth E. Carter. Not only has she been nominated for her work on Sinners, but the film itself broke a record when it received 16 nominations.
As a veteran in the business, Carter says she planned on sitting through the announcement calmly. “And then when Wunmi was the first one, I leapt out of my chair,” she says. “And then Delroy, and I just started jumping up and down.”
The only negative thing about this year’s announcement for Carter was the Academy’s choice to go in alphabetical order. “It’s a build up of anticipation,” she says. After nearly every category ended with Sinners, that anticipation in her category allowed her to have a “moratorium” to reflect on her chances. “But then they said my film, and I could totally relive that moment over and over again.”
Carter credits writer-director Ryan Coogler’s “love letter to Uncle James” for connecting everyone in a sense of history. “Uncle James is what resonated with all of us, why Ryan wrote it,” she says. “To be honoring our ancestors, to be honoring our relatives is a good place to start.”
Honoring ancestors was essential throughout her work, but the real showcase is the “surreal montage” during Miles Caton’s performance of ‘I Lied to You’. “It was like everything I ever wanted to do or be as a costume designer,” she says. “I got to retrace history. I also got to be creative and surreal, going through generations, genres, time periods… All that great stuff in there that I really felt I poured out my story as well as a costume designer.”
In addition to being the first Black person to win an Oscar for costume design in 2019 for Black Panther, this nomination also makes Carter the most nominated Black woman in the history of the Oscars. With all this recognition for herself, as well as Sinners‘ incredible 16 nominations, Carter says this points to a generation of filmmaking for everyone.
“When it breaks records, it’s a reminder that this Hollywood industry was not built on inclusion, it was built on segregation, and this is a story about segregation and how people made something out of nothing,” she says. “Having this many nominations is a testament that we’ve come a long way and we’re opening it up even more. We have the Irish music and we have all kinds of the Chinese culture, so our story is so widespread and we’re opening up the store to say they’re ready for it. Come bring your stories. Bring your artistic abilities, bring your talent. Bring your cinematic story to the foreground. This is the time for storytelling.”