SAG & Golden Globe Nominations
Numlock Awards is your one-stop awards season newsletter, and it’s back! Every week, join Walt Hickey and Michael Domanico as they break down the math behind the Oscars and the best narratives going into film’s biggest night. Today’s edition comes from Michael.
Last year around this time, we all watched the 92nd Academy Awards. This year, we’re just now getting the Golden Globe and SAG nominations. Let’s dive into the acting categories this weekend — Best Picture, as Walter mentioned in his previous post, is a hot mess, with once-reliable precursors losing their predictive power. With two sets of high-profile nominations, let’s dive into who’s in, who’s out, and who’s on the cusp.
Best Actress: Women with both SAG & Globe Nominations
Viola Davis, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (available on Netflix)
Vanessa Kirby, Pieces of a Woman (Netflix)
Frances McDormand, Nomadland (Hulu, Feb. 19)
Carey Mulligan, Promising Young Woman (Amazon rental)
Maria Bakalova*, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (Amazon Prime)
As you may recall, the Globes are split between Drama and Musical/Comedy categories, and the winner of the Drama Globe is the third-best predictor of who will win Best Actress. Bakalova was submitted by Amazon for consideration in the supporting category (where she showed up with SAG), but the Hollywood Foreign Press Association bumped her to Best Actress in a Musical/Comedy.
The Academy could also choose to do the same — it is not beholden to the studio’s preferred placement — but given that she’s solidly in the SAG supporting actress category and won the New York Film Critics’ Association best supporting actress trophy, I’d say she’ll end up in Best Supporting Actress at the Oscars.
Either SAG or Globe Nomination
From there you have Amy Adams in Netflix’s Hillbilly Elegy taking the final SAG spot for female actor in a leading role, and the remaining four women in the Globes’ Musical/Comedy category — Kate Hudson (Music), Michelle Pfeiffer (French Exit), Rosamund Pike (I Care a Lot), Anya Taylor-Joy (Emma) — fighting for that coveted fifth Best Actress slot.
It will be interesting to see how this shakes out — Adams is not only in a critically reviled movie, but mainstream reviews dinged her in particular for her over-the-top performance. Hudson and Pike are in movies that barely exist, even in this era of streaming. (Hudson is also probably too busy pushing Fabletics to properly campaign.)
Meanwhile, Pfeiffer hasn’t landed an Oscar nomination since 1992’s Love Field, but ever since her brief hiatus in the mid-2000s, she’s been inching ever closer toward a full comeback. And Taylor-Joy, the star of the The Queen’s Gambit, could very well be the Cloris Leachman of this season, starring on a hit show and scooping up an Oscar. For now, Adams’ SAG nomination seems to be the most promising.
Neither SAG nor Globe Nomination
The Oscars have a history of elevating nominees who don’t make a splash in major precursors. We could see NYFCC Best Actress winner Sidney Flanigan (Never Rarely Sometimes Always, on HBOMax), Yeri Han (Minari, on demand Feb. 26), or Oscar winner Sophia Loren (The Life Ahead, on Netflix) show up, but it’s going to be hard.
Best Actor: Men with both SAG & Globe Nominations
Riz Ahmed, Sound of Metal (Amazon Prime)
Chadwick Boseman, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (Netflix)
Anthony Hopkins, The Father (on demand March 26)
Gary Oldman, Mank (Netflix)
All four of these men are nominated for the Globes’ Drama category, which is becoming one of the most accurate Oscar precursors for Best Actor. Ahmed and Boseman have split some of the critics’ awards, but Boseman is competing against himself — he’s also been winning awards for his supporting turn in Netflix’s Da 5 Bloods, so we’ll see where the awards bodies start to coalesce. It feels like Boseman is going to win a posthumous Oscar, we just have to see whether it’s for lead/supporting.
Hopkins has won a handful of smaller critics’ awards, which is more than Oldman has going for him.
Either SAG or Globe Nomination
Steven Yeun’s SAG nomination and career momentum — with recent turns in drunk Oscar accepter Bong Joon-ho’s Okja, Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You, and Lee Chang-dong’s Burning — have him as the front-runner for that fifth spot.
The Globe Musical/Comedy nominees include Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat Subsequent Moviefilm), James Corden (The Prom), Lin-Manuel Miranda (Hamilton), Dev Patel (The Personal History of David Copperfield), and Andy Samberg (Palm Springs). (We also have Tahar Rahmin in the drama The Mauritanian, which I’ll tackle in a different category.)
Baron Cohen probably has better luck as a supporting actor in Netflix’s The Trial of the Chicago 7, and Miranda isn’t even eligible for the Oscar. Even with wins, Corden, Patel, and Samberg seem like unlikely nominees.
Neither SAG nor Globe Nomination
Delroy Lindo seemed like an early, obvious contender for his work in Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods. Despite misses, I wouldn’t count him out just yet. With Chadwick Boseman getting acclaim for both Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and Da 5 Bloods, they’ll be trying to get Da 5 Bloods in front of as many eyes as possible, which benefits Lindo’s lead actor campaign.
Best Supporting Actress: Women with both SAG & Globe Nominations
Maria Bakalova*, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (Amazon Prime)
Glenn Close, Hillbilly Elegy (Netflix)
Olivia Colman, The Father (on demand March 26)
Helena Zengel, News of the World (Amazon rental)
Again, Bakalova is at the Globes as a leading actress, but supporting everywhere else. Close has infamously never won an Oscar, losing on her last nomination to Olivia Colman in The Favourite. Zengel is the Abigail Breslin of this year — she’s a 12-year-old German actress playing opposite Tom Hanks.
Will the Glenn Close Curse finally end? Hard to say. As I mentioned, Hillbilly Elegy is hardly a critical favorite, but her reviews have been much kinder. Or we could have a repeat of this exact moment when she lost for her leading role in The Wife. Come to think of it, Zoom wouldn’t look too different:
I did a deeper dive on career Oscars and why Close lost a few years back, so check it out if you’re interested.
Either SAG or Globe Nomination
Amanda Seyfried got her first Golden Globe nomination for her supporting work in Mank. Meanwhile, Yuh-jung Youn scored the final spot at the SAG Awards.
A lot of this comes down to how the Oscars respond to Mank and Minari. SAG was much cooler on Mank, with only Gary Oldman landing a nomination. Meanwhile, Minari got three — for Yeun, Youn, and best cast. Seeing as only members of the actors’ branch can nominate folks in the acting categories at the Oscars, I think the slight edge goes to Yuh-jung Youn in Minari.
Jodie Foster also landed on the Globes’ shortlist for The Mauritanian (no streaming release confirmed yet). Like her co-star Tahar Rahmin, Foster has not been a major player in this awards race. If that movie comes in strong with the BAFTAs or other awards bodies, I’ll start to consider it, but right now it feels like the members of HFPA really liked a random movie they saw before everyone else, and they just wanted you to know.
Neither SAG nor Globe Nomination
The big one here is Ellen Burstyn, who stars alongside Vanessa Kirby in Pieces of a Woman. She’s been missing from the Oscar race since 2000’s Requiem for a Dream. Similar to Sophia Loren, let’s see if the Oscars are more amenable to some of their former favorites.
Best Supporting Actor: Men with both SAG & Globe Nominations
Sacha Baron Cohen, The Trial of the Chicago 7 (Netflix)
Daniel Kaluuya, Judas and the Black Messiah (HBO Max, Feb. 12)
Jared Leto, The Little Things (HBO Max)
Leslie Odom Jr., One Night in Miami (Amazon Prime)
This category is tricky. As I mentioned above, Chadwick Boseman is a strong competitor in both Lead Actor and Supporting Actor, so it’s difficult to tell where his support will coalesce. (Winning both, though not out of the question, still seems unlikely.) If one of these men were to fall off, my money would be on Leto, whose film is sitting at a pretty dismal 47% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Either SAG or Globe Nomination
Enter Chadwick Boseman in Da 5 Bloods for the SAG Awards and Bill Murray in On the Rocks for the Globes. Boseman might not win both lead and supporting categories, but dual nominations seem likely. Murray, on the other hand… well, he’s Bill Murray. Everyone sort of likes him and sort of dislikes him simultaneously. For now, I think it’s the four men with double nominations + Boseman.
Neither SAG nor Globe Nomination
This is a relatively sparse category. Paul Raci in Sound of Metal has a couple of critics’ awards, Glynn Turman from Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom has a win from the L.A. critics, and the entire cast of The Trial of the Chicago 7 is basically right there (Mark Rylance, Frank Langella, the guy from Succession with the wig… you know the one).
This is a super weird awards season. We’ll unpack some of the narratives going into the big night in the coming weeks, though everything seems much more low-key given everything else going on. Come April, with hopefully more of us vaccinated, we’ll return to a time-honored tradition: watching Glenn Close lose at a televised awards show.