Nicholas Britell

Nicholas Britell works as a composer, pianist, and film producer whose best-known contributions include the soundtracks for The Big Short (2015), Moonlight (2016), and If Beale Street Could Talk (2018). His approach has shifted across projects, moving from the buoyant mix of jazz, funk, and classical textures heard in The Big Short to the refined and emotionally resonant writing featured in If Beale Street Could Talk. The first of several Academy Award nominations arrived in 2017 for Moonlight, followed in 2019 by an Emmy win for the main theme of HBO’s Succession. In 2021 he completed the Disney feature Cruella, which blended jazz, classical, and rock elements while highlighting a more whimsical dimension of his writing.

A product of Julliard’s Pre-College Division and Harvard University, Britell began piano studies at age five and created his earliest film score while still an undergraduate in the early 2000s. After completing his degree he balanced steady employment with occasional scoring assignments for short films until wider notice arrived through his own piano piece “Forgotten Waltz No. 2,” written for the 2008 short Eve directed by Natalie Portman.

Alongside classical commissions such as Portals, created with violinist Tim Fain, and further short-film work, he supplied music for the 2012 television documentary Haiti: Where Did the Money Go and the crime feature Gimme the Loot. Additional cues, among them violin passages and spirituals, were heard in the 2013 Best Picture winner 12 Years a Slave. During the same period he produced the short film Whiplash, which later expanded into the 2014 Best Picture nominee of the same title that he also co-produced. The following year brought the Adam McKay-directed Best Picture nominee The Big Short, again scored by Britell. Subsequent feature assignments included Free State of Jones and the Barry Jenkins-directed Moonlight, both released in 2016; the latter earned him his initial Oscar nomination for Best Original Score.

He next entered episodic television by composing for the HBO comedy-drama Succession, which premiered in mid-2018. Returning to features, he received a second Academy Award nomination for the 2018 Jenkins collaboration If Beale Street Could Talk and also scored that year’s McKay-directed Best Picture nominee Vice. The Succession theme brought him a Primetime Emmy in 2019. In 2021 his work appeared in Jenkins’ series The Underground Railroad as well as McKay’s Don’t Look Up and the live-action Disney 101 Dalmatians spin-off Cruella; Don’t Look Up earned Britell a third Oscar nomination.