Countdown to the Oscars: Best Supporting Actress

We’re counting down the days until the Academy Awards! We’ll be here, breaking down each of the 23 categories, talking a bit of history, and trying to figure out who is going to win all those gold statues. So check back throughout the next three weeks for Last Cinema Standing’s Countdown to the Oscars.

Best Supporting Actress

The nominees are:

Angela Bassett in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

Hong Chau in The Whale

Kerry Condon in The Banshees of Inisherin

Jamie Lee Curtis in Everything Everywhere All at Once

Stephanie Hsu in Everything Everywhere All at Once

This is a mess this year – a big, beautiful, glorious mess. As someone trying to make predictions with at least a little authority, I hate it. As a fan of drama and surprises at the Academy Awards, I love it. I’d normally save this next bit for the final analysis section down below, but it’s just too juicy to wait. Here’s where we stand right now:

For a long time, Angela Bassett was the presumed frontrunner, splitting a lot of the critical accolades with Kerry Condon. But, Bassett is a legend, and there has been a feeling that this is her time. Then, she won the Golden Globe and everything seemed on track. However, Condon came along and won the BAFTA, which as you may know, is my favorite predictor of upsets in the acting categories. So, I was ready to go that way. 

But, the Screen Actors Guild Awards arrived and threw another curveball. Jamie Lee Curtis won. Like Bassett, Curtis is Hollywood royalty and has been doing this thing forever. It wouldn’t be beneath the SAG membership to give an award for a lifetime of achievements, but if that were the case, why Curtis and not Bassett? For what it’s worth, Stephanie Hsu just won the breakthrough performer award at the Independent Spirits, so she’s not out of it either.

The wild card in all of this is that Everything Everywhere All at Once peaked at exactly the right time. It won an unprecedented four SAG awards right as ballots were about to be sent out. It got the WGA and dominated the Indie Spirits with ballots in hand. It looks like a big, historic winner, and nobody doesn’t want to be on the side of that. The problem is: Will Hsu and Curtis split votes? I don’t know. Nobody knows, and it’s great.

Jamie Lee Curtis in Everything Everywhere All at Once – I like Curtis a lot. She was a major part of my childhood in movies like Halloween, My Girl, and House Arrest. She’s wonderful in Prom Night, Knives Out, and the Freaky Friday remake. She seems like a fun, funny presence in interviews and when giving speeches. All around, an easy person to root for. I don’t think she’s particularly good in this movie.

Now, she is saddled with playing a humorless IRS agent, a kind of cult enforcer, and the hot dog-fingered lover of Michelle Yeoh in one universe. It’s all pretty thankless. That said, she’s also overdoing it in every single one of those characters. One could say she is matching the tone of the film around her, and that would be correct, but it doesn’t make it good.

Kerry Condon in The Banshees of Inisherin – Sandwiched between Colin Farrell and Cate Blanchett at the top of my list of the performances of the year would be Kerry Condon as Siobhán. Condon is working in every part of the emotional spectrum, bringing dignity, grace, and common sense to the character who serves as the rational center of this wild story. Such characters can often be drag to play, but Condon’s wit and intelligence make Siobhán just as fascinating as the characters that orbit around her.

It’s not just in the big, showy moments we all saw in the trailer, although she nails those, too. Condon wows in the quiet, sad moments that might otherwise fly by under the radar but which add up to a whole character. The first time she heads down to the pub, intent on grabbing a sherry and being a part of the community, there is a spring in her step and a shy smile on her face. The way she turns down Dominick (Barry Keoghan) for a date is so gentle and honest. There are a dozen little moments like these throughout the film, and they never stop impressing each time they crop up.

Angela Bassett in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever – Bassett knows how to command a room. Ryan Coogler is a magnificent director who knows how to give Bassett the space to shine, but that doesn’t work if Bassett ever gives less than her all, if she ever takes her foot off the gas once. Queen Ramonda must command the respect of every single person in the room at all times, and Bassett accomplishes this through sheer force of will.

A lot has been made of Bassett being the first acting nominee from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I would argue it’s more remarkable that this recognition is coming for a performer playing a hero. Villains always tend to stand out in comic book movies. They get to have more fun. They’re bigger, bolder. That is why both Heath Ledger and Joaquin Phoenix won Oscars for playing the Joker and no one has ever been nominated for playing Batman. Heroes tend to be too one-note in comic book movies. They are stoic, determined, and representative of a moral certitude that may work in battling evil but doesn’t offer an actor much in the way of range. Bassett cuts through all of that to find depth and layers in a monarch beset on all sides by enemies and standing up to protect her family and her kingdom.

Stephanie Hsu in Everything Everywhere All at Once – Speaking of villains that get to go big, Hsu swings for the fences as this film’s central antagonist, Jobu Tupaki. In a different universe, we are meant to have sympathy for her as Joy Wang, daughter of a chilly, withholding mother. Hsu seems to have a perfect read on both characters, and for all the dumb things the movie makes her do, we at least believe in the characters underneath it all.

You might know Hsu from The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel on Amazon or from Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, but this performance was really the first time I took notice of her. Her strength, spirit, and intensity all jump off the screen, and I can’t wait to see what she does next.

Hong Chau in The Whale – I have not had a chance to see the Kelly Reichardt film Showing Up that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last May. If, however, it is as good as I have heard, then Chau truly had one of the great years in recent memory. In addition to having Showing Up at Cannes, she had a major role in box-office hit The Menu and garnered this Oscar nomination for The Whale. And though The Whale has not been particularly loved by critics, Chau has received nothing but plaudits for her work.

She plays Liz, a kind of nurse/caretaker to Brendan Fraser’s morbidly obese Charlie. She is protective of him but never coddles him, always urging him to get to a hospital and get his life together. As the film goes on, we learn the depth of their connection, and Liz’s actions take on more meaning and nuance. Chau plays all of this beautifully, matching Fraser’s energy in scene after scene. When she breaks down, Chau makes us feel the wait of her burden and all the pain it is causing her.

The final analysis

Okay, so what are we doing? Let’s look at the recent history of each of the major awards bodies and see which is most vulnerable and which seems right on the money. We’ll use 2010 as a cutoff:

Golden Globes – They have matched with the Oscars nine of the past 12 years. The three they missed were 2020 when Youn Yuh-jung won the Oscar but was not even nominated at the Globes (Jodie Foster won for The Mauritanian in an all-time strange victory); 2015 when Alicia Vikander won the Oscar for The Danish Girl (the Globes went with Kate Winslet in Steve Jobs, who beat Vikander who was nominated for Ex Machina); and the historically close 2013 race when Jennifer Lawrence won the Globe but Lupita Nyong’o memorably won the Oscar.

Screen Actors Guild – The guild has matched the Oscars 11 of the past 12 years. The only miss came in 2018 when the Oscar went to Regina King, who was not nominated at the SAG Awards. The guild went with Emily Blunt for The Quiet Place, a performance that was not even nominated at the Academy Awards.

BAFTAs – The Brits are spottier. They have matched eight times in 12 years. They missed in 2010, going with Helena Bonham Carter for The King’s Speech (eventual Oscar winner Melissa Leo was not nominated). They missed that 2013 race, also going with Lawrence over Nyong’o. They matched the Globes in 2015, going with Winslet over Vikander, who was again nominated for Ex Machina, not The Danish Girl. And, in 2018, like at the SAG Awards, King was not nominated, clearing the way for Rachel Weisz in The Favorite.

Going back to the beginning of the SAG Awards in 1994, only once has a performer won the Oscar without winning at least one of these major awards first (that was Marcia Gay Harden for Pollock in 2000, a performance not even nominated anywhere but the Oscars). So, we can safely eliminate Hong Chau and Stephanie Hsu, though if Hsu wins on the wave of Everything Everywhere All at Once momentum, we shouldn’t be surprised.

The Golden Globes are a weirdo organization, grasping at straws to regain their relevance, and as great as Angela Bassett is, I think she’s running in third place. There may also be an element of MCU bias here, as well. It would be tough to imagine voters getting over that, though they’ve never minded rewarding actors playing the Joker in Batman movies.

So, Curtis or Condon? Well, over more than a decade, the SAG Awards have been the more accurate predictor in this category compared to the BAFTAs, so I’m forced to predict Jamie Lee Curtis. I’m at peace with that. If she wins, I will be right. If she loses to Condon, I will be happy to be wrong. If anything else happens, well, I was never going to get it anyway. That’s it. Curtis. Final answer.

Will win: Jamie Lee Curtis in Everything Everywhere All at Once

Should win: Kerry Condon in The Banshees of Inisherin

Should have been here: Claire Foy in Women Talking

A note about my favorite snub: I mentioned this in my Adapted Screenplay piece, but Women Talking should have been up for a lot more Oscars than the two for which it is nominated. That it received no acting nominations for an ensemble that could easily have made up the entirety of this category will forever baffle me. I could have gone with anyone from the cast in this spot, and Jessie Buckley in particular was brilliant, but if I have to pick one, it’s Claire Foy. Her speech about protecting her children is one of the great movie moments of the year and will stay with me long after this Oscars season has passed.

Next time: Best International Feature