An Ohio native is among the nominees at the 2026 Oscars, taking place this weekend.
Hannah Beachler of Centerville is nominated for production design of the critically acclaimed film “Sinners” – a Southern Gothic that’s a period piece, a vampire thriller and a thoughtful exploration of cultural resilience, all rolled into one.
Beachler graduated from the University of Cincinnati for fashion design and then studied film at Wright State University in Dayton.
In 2019, she became the first African American to win an Oscar for production design for her work on “Black Panther.” She's also worked on other major movies, including "Moonlight" and "Fruitvale Station".
This year, she’s a part of a film with a record-breaking number of nominations. “Sinners” will vie for Best Production Design, Best Picture, Best Director and 13 other categories.
Beachler sat down with The Ohio Newsroom to share her process for designing the world of 1920s Clarksdale, Mississippi, where the film is set.
This interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
On her start in production design
“I think that once I started doing [production design for a Lifetime movie in Dayton], I loved this idea of shaping the surroundings of these people who are living within this specific story. And that really captured me because it was kind of everything that I loved. It had clothing or fashion, depending on what the story is. Growing up with my father being an architect, there was an aspect of the environment, the built space. So it was like, okay, this is kind of everything I want.”
On what makes “Sinners” so immersive
“It really is, like they say, the devil's in the details. It's the small things that you don't necessarily think changes the way an audience sees something. Even if you don't see it on film, the actor sees it. If I can harness and control and detail the world, they're really going to respond and react to the space that they're in. So, it was a slow education of how these small details, whether you see them or not, sort of shapes what people feel and think when they walk into the space.”
On her favorite design details in “Sinners”
“There was a ton of detail because it's heavily researched as well, right? We needed to make it right for the time period. We needed to understand what the economy of the country was and the Jim Crow segregation at the time. [In the film], when you see the downtown, one side is Black and one side is white. When you go into those grocery stores, what's the difference? The difference is on the Black side, it’s all utilitarian work-related staples. You see all the things that a sharecropper would need to do their job. Then when you go to the other side, it's flowers, cakes and sewing and fabrics, little things like that. Those are the little details, like all the wood that's in the churches were cut dimensionally, which is how they cut wood in 1932. All of the columns and posts that hold up the juke joint are the trees that you see at Annie’s.”
On getting her second Oscar nomination
“It’s an honor, obviously, to, for a second time, be acknowledged in that way and have your work recognized, because it's hard work. I don't think any of us really knew what to say or how to feel about being recognized in every category that we're eligible for and it being the most nominations in the history of the Oscars. It takes a while for you to wrap your head around it. But when I saw the quality and the talent of the crew, I wasn't really too surprised either because all of us were immersed and we really went as hard as we could go. We battled the weather. We battled the schedule. We battled the budget. And I think we won the war.”
