Michelle Williams must have laughed, at least a little, that this was even news. In September, two weeks after Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans” premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, it was revealed in big headlines that the movie studio intended to push Williams up in the Best Leading Actress category for prize consideration.
Award experts were shocked. Because at the time, even though the film wouldn’t be released for another two months, it seemed like a safe bet that Williams’ acclaimed performance as Mitzi Fabelman, the leading lady’s eccentric and withdrawn mother, was a sure bet to be nominated and won. even win the award for Best Cast. Oscar actress.
But what was that assumption based on? It wasn’t the performance itself, but rather the expectation that the studio, Universal, would take advantage of the ever-common practice of category fraud, where a lead or co-star role is pushed to the supporting category in order to have a better chance of a nomination. role and performance qualified as leads (it is and does) was irrelevant to experts.
“Why isn’t he playing the system,” they’d say, “since everyone else is?”
Williams then revealed that she personally asked Universal to campaign with her in the main category, which of course is where she belongs. Her roles in “Brokeback Mountain” and “Manchester by the Sea” were genuine supporting performances and were consequently Oscar-nominated. The scope of her role in “The Fabelmans” is simply too important to the plot, both in terms of screen time and story arc, to be relegated to the bottom category. She is a leading role.
So bravo to Williams for insisting on a Best Actress push, even if her chances of winning gold might have been better in the other category. As of now, with about a week to go until the Oscar nominations are announced, she is not considered a lock to be nominated. She missed out on a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination, a key precursor. But her decision marks a refreshing and wonderful resurrection of common sense in the Oscars campaign. If Williams isn’t nominated next week, she deserves even more credit.
To be clear, it’s up to the 1,302 members of the Academy’s acting branch to decide in which category to place an actor or actress. (The rules specifically tell them to make their own decisions.) And sure enough, Williams could be nominated in the supporting category after all. But the studios spend a lot of time and money to set the compass for everyone else. And against basic logic, one of the biggest propaganda stunts in recent decades has been the studios’ bizarre and cynical redefinition of what a lead role is.
For example, a few years ago, when “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” was released, any sensible moviegoer understood that it was a movie with two male leads: Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio. Like “Midnight Cowboy” or “Amadeus” or “Giant” or “Network” or “Sleuth” or “The Dresser.” All of which, rightfully so, earned him two nominations in the Best Actor category at the Oscars.
But even before “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” premiered, in the summer of 2019, this narrative had gotten into the water supply: that Pitt was a supporting player and DiCaprio was the lead. Who knows what that was based on? The two are equally important as protagonists of the story and have almost exactly the same amount of screen time. Perhaps it was prompted by the fact that Pitt hadn’t won an Oscar for acting at the time and had a better chance of winning a supporting award? (Which he finally did).
Well, there is a very old tradition of that game. Timothy Hutton won a supporting Oscar for a major role in “Ordinary People.” Ditto Benicio del Toro for “Traffic”. And Haley Joel Osment was nominated in the supporting category for a movie, “The Sixth Sense,” in which she appeared in virtually every scene. Each case, even those three, can be taken on its merits: Hutton was a co-star and del Toro was part of an ensemble, Osment was a child actor.
But how the hell can they explain, a couple of years ago, in one of the weirdest things to ever happen in the Oscar universe, nominating the two lead actors from “Judas and the Black Messiah,” Daniel Kaluuya and LaKeith Stanfield, in the support category? That indicated a level of massive bewilderment at the very idea that a movie can have two lead roles from the same genre. What were they thinking… or drinking?
This sounds crazy at first, but after the Kaluuya and Stanfield situation, I think if “Thelma & Louise” were made today, the acting branch of the Academy would nominate Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis for Best Supporting Actress instead of , as they did in 1992, for Best Actress. Or perhaps, as in the “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” example, they would put the two actresses in different categories, probably Sarandon for endorsing because she, like Pitt, had a better chance of winning there.
“Thelma & Louise” is an instructive film in this history because it marked the last time, 31 years ago, that two leading artists were nominated for the same film. Skillful study campaigns and acquiescence by the Academy have essentially made it impossible for such a thing to happen again. Because now, even pundits and critics believe everything the studio tells them: sure, Rooney Mara is a supporting actress in “Carol” (ridiculous, obviously she’s the co-star); and oh yeah, why not, Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz are supporting actresses in “The Favourite” (they absolutely co-star).
Of course, there’s not a single person to blame for this situation where the Academy, and Oscar pundits, have been brainwashed into believing that leading roles are supporting roles. As in the case of Michelle Williams, experts sometimes get too caught up in an artist’s perceived chances of winning the award. That horse racing betting isn’t really at the root of the problem.
But really, if we’re looking for someone to blame for this problem, there may be one person who is more to blame for the leadership versus support landscape as it currently stands.
Today he’s rotting in a Los Angeles jail cell, but Harvey Weinstein was once the most cunning and ruthless of Oscar defenders. And it was Weinstein who, in 1994, saw “Pulp Fiction” and decreed that even though it was a story, unambiguously, with two lead performances by Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta, that simply wouldn’t cut it for an Oscar run.
According to Weinsten, Travolta was the lead actor and Jackson was the supporting actor. Tossed a coin to decide? And the acting branch of the Academy went ahead and nominated the two actors in the categories Weinstein directed them to. Neither of them won, but each was nominated, which was the fundamental strategy. However, it should be remembered that Jackson was nominated for and ultimately won Best Male Lead at that year’s Film Independent Spirit Awards. (Weinstein, meanwhile, later successfully divided films into categories with co-stars like “The English Patient” and “Chicago.”)
And, irony of all terrible ironies, there was a 2022 movie with two leading roles in which the studio made a cowardly and illogical decision to campaign with one leading and one supporting. That would be “She Said,” starring Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan as New York Times reporters investigating the truth of Harvey Weinstein’s monstrous crimes against women.
Who could watch “She Said” and think that co-star Mulligan was a supporting actress and Kazan was the only lead in the film? Inconceivable. But that’s how Universal, the same study of “The Fabelmans”, decided to campaign with the two actresses. And it’s worked, with Mulligan earning a Golden Globe nomination in the supporting category.
But Universal’s awards team should have consulted Michelle Williams on how to campaign with the actresses on “She Said.” Williams could have told them that, like her own work in “The Fabelmans,” both Mulligan and Kazan play leading roles and both give rich and complex performances. Both should have campaigned for Best Actress. And acknowledging that is more important than who gets or doesn’t get an Oscar nomination.
