After the recent campaign that saw Andrea Riseborough nominated for Best Actress as the titular character in To Leslie, fellow nominee Michelle Yeoh spoke out about the controversy. “The Academy has always prided itself on having regulations and playing by the rules,” she told BBC’s Today program, “if [cheating them] was so easy it would have been done before.”

To Leslie, directed by Michael Morris, premiered at last year’s SXSW and grossed a little over $27,000 in an underwhelming release. Lacking a budget for an awards campaign, Riseborough and Morris turned to friends to help support the film at screenings and took it upon themselves to ensure the film was entered into the Academy’s screening portal. A social media campaign exploded in the final days before voting closed, rocketing Riseborough into the conversation. It was spearheaded by several stars, including fellow Oscar nominee Cate Blanchett, who singled out Riseborough’s performance in interviews at the Critics Choice Awards.

In response to the campaign and her first Oscar nomination, Riseborough noted:

“You always think, ‘If we’ve done a good enough job it will break through the noise,’ but often it’s just impossible to compete with millions of dollars of advertising. There are spotlights shining brighter in some places than in others and maybe it is just all to do with money, though I try not to be cynical in that way. It has been special to feel so supported by the community — especially by actors — and to feel like the work has broken through that.”

Criticism arose that Riseborough’s nomination was at the expense of Black actresses Viola Davis (The Woman King) and Danielle Deadwyler (Till). However, Yeoh, the first Asian American to be nominated for Best Actress, stressed, “I love [Viola and Danielle]… and wish we were all getting Oscars, but it’s tough. It took me 40 years to even get a nomination.”

Alongside Blanchett, Yeoh is a frontrunner for Best Actress for her role as Evelyn Wong in the multiverse thriller, Everything Everywhere All at Once, which has grossed over $100M worldwide and has garnered 11 Oscar nominations. Yeoh has described being nominated after her four decades-long career as “quite the journey” and has said she “hopes this is the start of a whole new world” for Asian actresses.