Paul Tazewell Wins Oscar for Best Costume Design

"We are wishing a huge congratulations to former Carnegie Mellon School of Drama faculty member Paul Tazewell for his historic #Oscar win tonight! 

Tazewell was awarded Best Costume Design for his compelling creations in Wicked Movie, the first Black man to receive the honor.” CMU School of Drama

Tazewell was a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Drama from 2003 to 2006. He was an associate professor and resident artist of costume design.
Paul Tazewell is the first Black man to win the Oscar for best costume design. He won an Academy Award on Sunday for his work on "Wicked."

Tazewell was nominated for an Oscar in 2022 for costume design on "West Side Story" and became the first Black man nominated in the category.

This isn't Tazewell's first big award. He won a Tony for his costumes in "Hamilton."

For his work on "Wicked," Tazewell designed more than 1,000 costumes, which were worked on by 70 people.

Glinda and Elphaba had 60 costumes, each with more than 25 looks for the movie.

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This showcase has featured early films from Ryan Coogler (Sinners, Black Panther), Stephen Caple Jr. (Creed II, Transformers: Rise of The Beast) and Reinaldo Marcus Green (King Richard, Bob Marley: One Love).

In Good Hands tells the compelling story of Dr. Diana Asante, a pediatric emergency physician navigating the challenges brought on by her last patients of the shift: a white boy unfamiliar with a Black female doctor, and an African American teenager caught in a dire situation with law enforcement. These incidents were drawn from real-life events of Dr. Owusu-Ansah, who works in a nationally recognized children’s hospital in Pittsburgh and also recently consulted for HBO’s The Pitt.

The film was written by Yasmine Crawley, a former CBS Page who currently works as an assistant and production associate at See it Now Studios, which produces documentaries and unscripted series for Paramount+ and CBS. Crawley and Dr. Sylvia participated in the PITTch Storytelling Initiative, which was funded in 2021 by a Richard King Mellon Foundation grant to help create more local career opportunities in southwestern Pennsylvania's growing film industry. In Good Hands was made as a community teaching film with a diverse group of students and community members working in front of and behind the camera, led by a producer/professor with Hollywood experience.

The film features a talented cast, including Chanell C.J. Harris in the lead role of Dr. Asante. After spending 18 years in LA working behind the lens in the music industry,  winning ASCAP FILM & TV Award for her original work on the BET hit show Real Husbands of Hollywood, Harris moved back to her native Pittsburgh, where she has curated and created original music for "The Writer's Landscape," a permanent exhibition at the August Wilson African American Cultural Center. The film was shot by cinematographer Haji Muya, a Somali refugee who learned his craft in Pittsburgh, believing that media at its best could do what the city’s famed Fred Rogers suggested, and “make good attractive.”

In Good Hands tackles complex themes of racial bias and equity in the medical field.

“We aim to create positive change through storytelling that highlights the realities and complexities of patient interactions in emergency medicine,” said Dr. Owusu-Ansah, who is also the medical director of Prehospital and Emergency Medicine services at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh.

The film was directed by Nick Buchheit, at the invitation of his friend and collaborator, cinematographer Muya. Buccheit is a filmmaker and co-founder of Covalent, a video production company headquartered in Pittsburgh. He directs commercials and writes for brands ranging from GoDaddy to Big Brothers Big Sisters. After spending over a decade shaping and guiding narratives for corporate America, Buccheit is championing more personal, creative, and socially reflective stories that showcase his passion for grounded performances and emotionally honest narratives, whether serious, strange, or somewhere in between.

In Good Hands was produced by Carl Kurlander, who returned to his hometown to teach after a career as a screenwriter (St. Elmo’s Fire) and TV writer/producer (Saved By the Bell)  He ended up on The Oprah Winfrey Show for leaving Hollywood to teach at the University of Pittsburgh, where he ended up producing a number of award-winning documentaries on the Salk polio vaccine, transplant pioneer Dr. Tom Starzl, and a new film on playwright August Wilson — all Pittsburghers who helped change our world. He is also the founding producer of the Pittsburgh Lens at Pitt’s Center for Creativity, which ran The PITTch Storytelling Initiative.

“We had over 70 entries for PITTch, and what stood out about Dr. Sylvia’s story and Yasmine’s script was how impactful it was, but also how somehow we have yet to see a lead character in a medical drama or movie who is a female African American. Dr. Sylvia’s work to get the Freedom House Ambulance Service story out there and reboot that historic EMS program is inspiring, and it is fitting that when Yasmine was a student at Pitt, she worked on the documentary we are doing on playwright August Wilson, who was also inspired by the compelling stories he found in Pittsburgh,” said Kurlander.