Meet Paloma Diamond: TikTok’s fictional Awards season actress everyone’s obsessed with

The steady domination of Paloma Diamond over the last year is an Awards season ascension with nothing to sniff at. Standing up there with greats like Meryl Streep, Helen Mirren and Glenn Close, Paloma Diamond is a name you see gracing the hallowed halls of the Oscar nominated women up for Best Actress year after year. She’s been a nominee 18 times, for goodness sake. The only thing worth noting is that Paloma Diamond is not real. She’s the brainchild of TikTok creator Julian Sewell – but the fact she’s fictional only adds to her mythos, and has led to Paloma Diamond being the MVP of TikTok, Awards season and online gays and film girlies. She’s now got a full profile and feature in Vulture. It’s the year of Paloma Diamond: But who actually is she?

First seen in Julian Sewell’s 2023 TikTok which showed us the 2023 nominees for Best Actress in New Zealand based Sewell’s fictional world, the video was a send up of every Awards show intro the the category – complete with clips of the actresses in role and then their smug reactions as they wait with baited breath to see which Oscar bait performance bagged the trophy. It went mega viral, with good reason. It’s impossibly accurate, and even more impossibly hilarious.

Since that video went huge, Paloma Diamond is an inside joke for the film girlies on both Twitter and TikTok – as well as everyone’s enemy Lorelai Lynch. Other fictional actresses existed in the video, but it’s Paloma Diamond who stole our hearts. From her fuck ass bob (she’s kind of like TikTok’s very own Diane from The Traitors, actually) to her unshakable smug confidence, Paloma Diamond was destined to live a camp legacy. But I don’t thin anyone could predict how well Julian Sewell fleshed out the Paloma Diamond backstory, telling us exactly who she is without even giving it all away.

Over the months since the video went viral, Paloma Diamond has had parody interviews, parody Vanity Fair features and faux fashion show front row spots. She’s living the greatest life.

Paloma Diamond is back nominated for 2024, with Julian Sewell going viral once again last month when he teased the nominees.

Speaking in his extensive (and truly great) Vulture interview, Sewell said of Paloma Diamond’s runaway success: “I did not expect for it to get the amount of attention it did. I just kept up with the universe, because that’s what people wanted. You always give the people what they want, right? So I just kind of started developing these characters, particularly the character of Paloma whom everybody wanted to see.

“It’s funny because her character has kind of evolved a little bit. If you look at the original video, she starts out kind of smug, and she gives that little look. But people really love that. They were really pining for her! And then she kind of transitioned, and I tried to make her a little bit more of the Glenn Close/Meryl Streep kind of esteemed actress. I really played into that trope. And this past year has just been the year of Paloma Diamond!”

We need her to win. The Paloma Diamond era can never end.

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