After taking home wins for best picture, director and adapted screenplay for One Battle After Another at the 2026 Oscars on Sunday, Paul Thomas Anderson addressed criticism about the film’s portrayal of Black women that has surrounded the movie since its fall release.
The filmmaker, who has done very little press during One Battle‘s awards run, appeared in the Oscars press room following his wins, where he was asked about comments particularly over the racial politics involving Teyana Taylor‘s character, revolutionary Perfidia Beverly Hills.
“I know a little bit about that critique. I know that Teyana has talked about it a lot. I know that we have the portrayal of many different characters. In particular her character, who was so flawed and unfortunately makes decisions that are detrimental to the revolution that she’s trying to fight,” Anderson told the room of reporters. “It’s complicated. We always knew that we were trying to make something complicated. We knew that we weren’t making something that was heroic and we needed to lean into that. We need to own the fact that this woman was suffering not only from postpartum depression, but she had issues of her own that she hadn’t really reconciled with.”
He continued, “It’s a very dangerous thing, when you start out and want to change the world, but you start to kind of become selfish; you read your own reviews. That was our hero in Perfidia, who becomes an anti-hero. The point of it is to set up a story of [Chase Infinit’s character] Willa, the next generation. What happens when your parents, who are damaged and have handed quite a difficult history to you — how do you manage that? That’s our story. Our story is in Chase, and her reaching, like I talked about in terms of the generational aspect, to try to do better.”
Taylor has also previously spoken about the discourse, telling Complex this month that “everyone deserves understanding, especially complicated characters. When we watch movies, we often ask, ‘Why did they do that?’ I love when films create healthy dialogue. I don’t just want people to understand — I want discussion. I want to hear different perspectives. We don’t do that enough anymore. It felt powerful to see this movie and Perfidia shake the table. It made some people uncomfortable, while others understood it completely — especially mothers who’ve dealt with postpartum depression.”
