Most pundits are rallying around for Killers of the Flower Moon and Lily Gladstone, but a potential win by Emma Stone in particular — or maybe even Sandra Huller — looms on the horizon. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want Lily Gladstone to win. I do. The Oscars have never gone to the person who gave “the best performance” because everyone has a different definition of what that is. Film critics, for instance, have always fallen for the more poker-faced stoic realism, where actors tend to like the more showy performances.
Some people think Glenn Close should have won for the obvious lead in The Wife, while others were fine with Olivia Colman winning for what should have been a supporting performance in The Favourite. Did anyone give a better performance than Annette Bening in Nyad? Probably not. Is Bening going to win? Probably not.
Most people pick the character they like best, not the performance. Why do Oscar voters pick one actress over another? In the old days it came down to these three factors:
Likability of Role
Likability of Actress
Likability of Movie
But there is no denying that in recent years, there has been more at play than just those three things. Although it doesn’t manifest in quite the same way in the Best Actress category, there is little doubt that voters now seem to lean toward doing something “good” with their vote. Another thing they do is award an actress for a movie, as they did with Colman when it was the only award The Favourite won.
Here are a few factors to think about.
1) Lily Gladstone was not nominated for the BAFTA and, thus, could not compete against Emma Stone. Some might say her lack of a nomination means something, but it would have meant more if they had not used a committee to place three of the nominees in the category, which they do.
2) The SAG changed their date closer to Oscar voting after 2020. In 2022 and 2023, all four SAG winners matched the Oscar.
3) Poor Things did not win the ACE Eddie (The Holdovers did), and it did not win British Film at the BAFTAs (The Zone of Interest did).
4) The only award Killers of the Flower Moon can win is Best Actress. Anatomy of a Fall (Huller) likely wins Screenplay, Poor Things (Stone) might win Production Design, Costumes, Cinematography, or all three.
5) Emma Stone will be winning her second Oscar in seven years. Lily Gladstone would become the first Native American to win Best Actress and only the third woman of color to win in 96 years of Oscar history.
Emma Stone’s performance is more typically the kind of performance the Academy would vote for. It is original, transformative, funny, sad, and above all — sexy. Turns out getting nekked and humping and pumping does sometimes bring in the win (Kate Winslet, Halle Berry, Gwyneth Paltrow). Sometimes even just sexing it up without getting nekked can do it (Julia Roberts, Sandra Bullock). Older veterans have rarely pulled in a win without sexing it up or getting nekked (Helen Mirren, Michelle Yeoh, Renee Zellweger, Julianne Moore, Cate Blanchett).
The Academy is 70% male and probably a majority of them are hetero. It isn’t rocket science to think about what moves the needle and there is a pretty strong probability, given that, for Emma Stone to pull in a win. So why aren’t people like predicting her? Well, it’s the SAG. The SAG usually predicts Best Actress.
I really like the analysis in this video, though it was done before the SAG Awards and stipulates that if Lily Gladstone wins the SAG then she wins the Oscar by her point system.
Let’s examine Best Actress and two other groups, the Globes, and the SAGs, since the first year of the SAG awards. I will leave out the BAFTA since they use a committee since 2020 to select three of the nominees.
Erik Anderson goes for Gladstone:
Anne Thompson, Joyce Eng and nearly all of the Gold Derby pundits all go for Gladstone.
Scott Feinberg is going for Gladstone.
Pete Hammond is going for Emma Stone.
21 times since the beginning of SAG, Best Actress has matched with Oscar.
What has changed, other than the SAG moving its date further back in order to be the last word before Oscar ballots are turned in, is that the Academy has had a influx of new members from all manner of backgrounds and life experiences.
2017 — 774
2018 — 928
2019 — 842
2020 — 819
For a total of 3,363 in the Trump era. After Biden took office, the membership invitees returned to “normal.”
2021 — 395
2022 — 397
That is a big enough change to make it all slightly harder to predict. What’s interesting about this year is that the new members are both MORE WOKE and MORE INTERNATIONAL. So international voters might go for Stone or Sandra Huller, whereas more “woke” voters might go for Gladstone.
This is by far the most suspenseful award of the night. I might have to get up and leave the room when they announce it because my stress level will be off the charts.
If I had to line them up, I’d do something like this:
Gladstone
Globe + SAG award
Never won before
Makes history
Well-liked in industry
Indie cred
In a movie that was widely seen and praised
Important movie
Connected to Leo, De Niro, and Scorsese.
Likely wins support from the Frances Fisher types.
Downsides:
Not a very big part.
Not a very showy part.
Not nominated for BAFTA.
Stone
Globe + BAFTA award
Hot and sex factor
Central role in film
Well-liked in industry
Indie cred + blockbuster cred
Connected to Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, the Lanthimos homies
Downsides:
The movie is weird and polarizes audiences
Not important (relative to Killers of the Flower Moon, at least)
Doesn’t make history
Already won an Oscar in 2016
Did not win SAG
I think that tips it in Gladstone’s favor: the SAG plus making history. But damned if I know, Oscarwatchers. Your guess is as good as mine.
We’ll do one more poll, shall we?
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