2025 Oscars: Best Actress and the Three Frontrunners

The Frontrunner

Mikey Madison, in my opinion, gives the performance of the year in Anora. That means there was never one minute in this movie that I did not believe I was watching a real person. Madison played Sexy Sadie in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, a wildly different kind of character, so intellectually, I know she’s acting, but watching Anora, largely due to Sean Baker’s realist’s eye, it never feels like acting. She brings us all the way into the story, into the character, and eventually, into her heart, which has been locked away for a long time.

The election has indeed shifted the film industry on its axis. Many of them had no idea how hated (at best) or irrelevant they are now to America, but that’s the consequence of locking yourselves in and locking everyone else out. Be that as it may, Hollywood isn’t change overnight. If anything, they will continue to feel hostility toward the very people who pay their bills.

Still, there are factors at play that will likely impact this race. Where the race did seem to be down to Mikey Madison vs. Karla Sofia Gascon in Emilia Perez, now, Cynthia Erivo in Wicked must be added to the mix. Erivo challenges Gascon more so than Madison because if Gascon is riding mostly on making history or identity politics (the first transgender nominee, etc), then Erivo has her beat. After all, only one Black woman has ever won in all of Oscar history. Erivo would be only the second in 97 years. For an industry that pretends to be woke and inclusive, that’s a hell of a stat.

Can Karla Sofia Gascon win on politics alone?

And yes, Gascon will indeed find herself in the middle of a culture war. Netflix would love nothing more than to be in the center of some kind of political fight, which boosts the chances of Gascon—who is really a supporting player in the film rather than a lead. This fight is getting much louder, thanks to a battle in DC over bathrooms.

What fuels today’s Left more than anything is the feeling of oppression. When you are people who have power and wealth, who dominate nearly every institution, who have captured all of culture, there isn’t much left in the way of oppression, so the wheel must keep spinning. Now, that fight has landed on transgender people as those who are theoretically most oppressed.

It might come down to wishing to elevate or protect transgender people, or defend them from the Right — a newly emboldened Right, we should say, where it’s now commonplace to mock and ridicule gay, transgender and drag queens on X, for instance.

So, if the fight continues to intensify, as I believe it will, the discourse around Best Actress will likely shift in Gascon’s favor. This is a fast-moving force meeting an immovable object situation, and it will get ugly. This issue will be among the only ones the Oscars and Hollywood will have now, considering “racism” is probably off the table.

What this means is that the inner pain of those who feel heartbroken over Trump’s loss will want to put that energy somewhere, and the perfect place for it, they might think, is to elevate and award the first transgender actress in Oscar history.

Do I think the Academy’s mostly 70% heterosexual males will vote for Gascon? Maybe. Do they care that much about politics? Probably. But it’s the actors I would worry about in this scenario. They are the ones who seem to be more concerned with politics, especially identity politics, than any other voting group in the Academy.

Cynthia Erivo rising

Erivo seems a lock now for a nomination, at the very least, as does Ariana Grande in supporting. Does that mean both could win? Sure. It depends, I think, on how well Wicked does at the box office.

Wicked “opened soft,” no matter how the pundits spin it or cover it up. It was expected, per Deadline, to do between $120-150 million this past weekend. It came in at $112. Worldwide it sits at around $162 million.   It will do well globally, and, as I said, it will likely end the year as one of the few major hits:

Speaking of Wicked, it is unintentionally about our time. It’s just that many people don’t see it. The other film unintentionally about our time is The End, Joshua Oppenheimer’s sincere expression of his fear that climate change will destroy the world. But in so doing, his film shows what has happened, in my view, to Hollywood and to so many on the Left (not all). They have locked themselves away and fear the world outside. Wicked similarly is a commentary on who they are; they just don’t see it. Take this guy on Twitter’s view:

At its core, “Wicked” is a movie about one person (Elphaba) setting out to shake up the establishment government and upset the given order of her country… pic.twitter.com/azLOoYfV1Q

— beefy_vibes🇺🇸 (@realitybites555) November 26, 2024

This point was already brought up by Film Threat’s Chris Gore, who loved the movie.

These are, I think, the top three at the moment who could win. Then that leaves just two slots left.

The For Your Consideration crew dives into Best Actress (my advice to you guys, by the way, is to change up the thumbnail on your videos to make them more appealing) and circles in on the next three:

Nicole Kidman, Babygirl
Demi Moore, The Substance
Angelina Jolie, Maria

But I’d also add:

Jean-Marie Baptiste, Hard Truths.

The remaining two slots will be a battle royale for star power between Kidman, Moore and Jolie. And that’s if Baptiste in not in the race. One of the three actress will have to be zotzed.

And it will come down to the movie. Demi Moore will gain momentum, I believe, because of what she puts herself through in The Substance. The film itself is all the buzz, with Guillermo del Toro holding a special screening with Coralie Fargeat recently. So I figure, she’s in.

That leaves Angelina Jolie and Nicole Kidman and their two films. Who among them is more popular?

It’s a toss-up, right? They are both women who have already won an Oscar for their work.

A24 vs. Netflix is also a tough nut to crack. Netflix spends lots of money on blogs and websites (not mine), which means they will get priority. A24 does not, choosing instead to allow buzz online to build momentum. These are two veteran actresses who are still dominating—both battling aging and working hard to get the good roles.

It could come down not to the actresses at all but to the movies they’re in and how much the voters like them, whether they were moved enough to vote for them.

Who Will Win?

It could come down to the money game, with Netflix and Universal locking horns and throwing lots of cash at the outlets, billboards, and blogs to see who can win the hearts and minds of voters. The Golden Globe voters will split them into categories, which will give whichever actress is in the Drama category a boost. It won’t be either Mikey Madison or Karla Sofia Gascon, because they will both be in the Musical/Comedy category. And both will go up against Cynthia Erivo in Wicked.

The Golden Globes category for Musical/Comedy could look like this:

Mikey Madison, Anora
Cynthia Erivo, Wicked
Karla Sofia Gascon, Emilia Perez
Demi More, The Substance
Zendaya, Challengers (or Emily Blunt, The Fall Guy – though that’s more an “Old Globes” thing)

Then drama might look something like this:
Angelina Jolie, Maria
Nicole Kidman, Babygirl
Marianne Jean Baptiste, Hard Truths
Pamela Anderson, The Last Showgirl
Kate Winslet, Lee (or Tilda Swinton/Julianne Moore for The Room Next Door)

The Drama category is mighty thin, but it will show which of those top three has the best chance of cracking the Best Actress Five.