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      She’s Oscar-Nominated, but Hong Chau Hopes to Stay an Underdog

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      Though Hong Chau received her first Oscar nomination last month, for playing Brendan Fraser’s caretaker in the Darren Aronofsky drama “The Whale,” it took awhile for the accolade to sink in. In 2017, after a breakout role in Alexander Payne’s “Downsizing,” she’d been hotly tipped for a nomination that never came, the sort of anticlimax that can make you want to detach from the hubbub of awards season altogether.This time around, there was a better outcome, though she is still sorting out exactly how she feels about it. “My honest reaction to the nomination was just relief,” she said.The 43-year-old Chau didn’t dream of becoming an Oscar-nominated actress: Born in a refugee camp to Vietnamese parents, she grew up in New Orleans and majored in creative writing and film studies at Boston University. After she signed up for an improv class to cure her shyness, her teacher encouraged her to pursue performing, and Chau moved to Los Angeles to seek parts. But success initially proved elusive, and skeptical casting directors told her that booking anything more than a day-player role was beyond her grasp.“After a few years of trying, you think, ‘Is it really worth it to try to dedicate my life to this?’” Chau said. “But what kept me going was the delusional hope that I’d get to work on a cool, weird movie, because those were the movies that I liked. I just kept hoping that something would happen and, thankfully, it did.”After following her big-screen debut in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Inherent Vice” with “Downsizing,” Chau’s career caught fire: She’s been a scene-stealer ever since, in projects like HBO’s “Watchmen” and the recent culinary comedy “The Menu,” in which she plays a coolly hostile maître d’. Chau will next be seen in a raft of auteur-driven films that include Kelly Reichardt’s “Showing Up,” Wes Anderson’s “Asteroid City” and “And” from Yorgos Lanthimos, but in the meantime, audiences are still discovering her work in “The Whale,” in which her character, Liz, tends to Fraser’s 600-pound recluse with a whole lot of tough love.Chau is “a force of nature: titanium backbone, suffers no fools, has a bear trap of a memory,” Fraser told me. “Everything is an embarrassment of riches for whoever’s editing her work because of how varied and interesting she is. And she can say more in between lines of dialogue, in the pauses and the silences, than I can with dialogue.”Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.Chau in “The Whale.” She initially turned down the chance to audition.A24, via Associated PressNow that the dust has settled from your Oscar nomination, how are you feeling?The things that have touched me the most have been messages from people who have known me since before I wanted to be an actor. My friend from high school called from work and she was like, “Oh my God, I’m shaking right now. I’m hiding in the closet to talk to you because I can’t control my body right now.” I was like, “Why?” But she was starting to tear up on the phone, and it made me get emotional because she was like, “I remember all of those years ago when I went to your improv shows.” I hadn’t thought about that in so long, and stuff like that is meaningful to me. The rest of it, I don’t know. My whole career identity has been about being an underdog and trying to scrap my way into getting parts.Do you mean you were perceived as an underdog, or you felt like an underdog?I felt like an underdog, always really excited and grateful to be a part of things. Now it’s just a weird thing where I feel like, “Do I have to step up? Am I going to be considered a veteran now?” I still feel so new and I’m still learning, so I hope this doesn’t mean that people think I know what I’m doing. I really admire people who are pros, but at the same time, I hope I never become a pro, if that makes sense.You shot “The Whale” in early 2021, not long after you had given birth to your first child. Was it an easy yes?Interviews With the Oscar NomineesKerry Condon: An ardent animal lover, the supporting actress Oscar nominee for “The Banshees of Inisherin” said that she channeled grief from her dog’s death into her performance.Michelle Yeoh: The “Everything Everywhere All at Once” star, nominated for best actress, said she was “bursting with joy” but “a little sad” that previous Asian actresses hadn’t been recognized.Angela Bassett: The actress nearly missed the announcement because of troubles with her TV. She tuned in just in time to find out that she was nominated for her supporting role in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”Austin Butler: In discussing his best actor nomination, the “Elvis” star said that he wished Lisa Marie Presley, who died on Jan. 12, had been able to celebrate the moment with him.I was fully anticipating not working for the first year while I was a mother, so I was surprised when my agent sent me the script for “The Whale.” I almost didn’t want to read it, because I didn’t want to get attached, and then when I read the script, I felt even more strongly that this wasn’t the right time in my life to tackle something like that because it would take so much work. Also, everything that I’d done had been a specifically Asian character, and because this character wasn’t, I thought the casting net for it must be so wide. I just didn’t want to throw my hat in the ring.About a week passed and my agent came back to me and was like, “They really want to see you. Is this something you want to let go?” During that time, I had thought about it, like, “Oh my gosh, it is a really amazing story and script. I don’t know, can I do it?” They asked for three scenes on tape for the audition. I told my agent, “Here’s one scene. That’s all I had time to do. I think he should know after one scene whether I’m the right girl for him or not.”That’s a flex, Hong!“I don’t have time to do anything else! My baby is crying in the background” [she told the agent]. But Darren called me right after he saw it, somehow my baby cooperated, and we were able to put another scene on tape very quickly.Once you accepted the role, how did you feel?Honestly, I felt like I wanted to barf. I was thinking, “Wow, I’m so tired. How can I possibly be on set and say all these lines? Oh my God, this is more dialogue than I’ve had in all of the things I’ve done combined.” Thankfully, my husband really stepped up and took care of our baby while I was at work and allowed me to do it. And he was the one who also really pushed me to throw my hat in the ring and said that he would be there to support me.Brendan Fraser said Chau “can say more in between lines of dialogue, in the pauses and the silences, than I can with dialogue.”Justin J Wee for The New York TimesBefore shooting, the actors had three weeks of rehearsal. Is that the sort of thing that you spark to as a performer?I found rehearsals really restrictive, and I don’t think Darren will mind me describing it as that. He obviously knew what he wanted to do, so a lot of rehearsal from the get-go was spent on blocking, and it was so specific so early on. That’s what I had objection to because in my mind, rehearsal means that you just feel everything out without already knowing where you need to be.By the second or third day, I kind of tuned him out a little bit and was able to just focus on Brendan and trying to find those different moments with him. One of the functions of Liz in the script was to show the audience who Charlie was prior to us meeting him in this dire state, and finding those moments of joy and of levity needed to be worked out in rehearsal, because once we got on set, there wasn’t going to be time because of the limitations of the suit that Brendan was wearing. It was incredibly hot to wear silicone, so there wasn’t as much time to futz around.What do you think Liz is like outside the space we see her in during the movie?Well, when I was cast, my agents had thrown out some names of other people who were in consideration for the role. None of them were Asian, and the role wasn’t written specifically as Asian. So once I was cast, the writer Sam Hunter added the line about her being adopted. I think it was a useful bit of information in terms of picturing what it was like for her growing up in Idaho in this very conservative, religious family. That informed a lot of the choices that I made.I asked Darren if I could have tattoos and he said yes, even though you never see them on camera in the movie, because I was like, “Oh, I think she was a raver girl.” I could imagine Liz going to some warehouse parties and rebelling against her super-religious adoptive parents. But that was all just for me, and it felt luxurious, like, “Oh, this only happens on a Darren Aronofsky movie.” No other production would allow me to spend the time or the money on these tattoos.Maybe not, but on projects like “The Menu” or “Watchmen,” I’ve heard you had a lot of input into how those characters would look.Even though they’re limited in screen time, I want them to feel interesting. That’s part of the fun for me. I think a lot of people would maybe look at it in a more pitiful way, like, “Oh, why doesn’t she get to play lead characters? Why just supporting?” But I love supporting characters and I love doing that work to make them feel really full — it’s a little bit of a puzzle where you have to look for clues in the text. It’s not about jockeying for more screen time or more lines or anything like that. I’m usually more entertained or invested in whatever is going on with a supporting character than the lead character.In “The Menu,” Chau plays a stern maître d’ opposite Ralph Fiennes’s imperious chef.20th Century FoxIn past interviews, you’ve said that you don’t necessarily think of yourself as an actor. After a year like the one you’ve had, has that changed?When I say I don’t feel like an actor, it’s because typically whenever you read a profile of an actor, this is all that they’ve ever wanted to do. I don’t know if I could say the same thing, because I didn’t intend on being an actor. I didn’t go to school for it, and I only took improv classes as a way to break out of my shell because I was so introverted. I thought I wanted to be either a writer or an editor, something that was a little bit more solitary, and it’s just odd that I find myself in front of the camera.What do you get out of acting now that’s different than when you first began?I don’t know if I ever wanted anything out of it! I just wanted to be on set, to hang out with people, and to see the finished product. I could be on set all day if I didn’t have a family to take care of. I just love watching everybody work, not even just the actors — I love watching the grips move the lights, and the set decorators tweaking the little drapes. I also feel like my most relaxed and most confident self on set, too. I don’t know what to do with myself when I’m on a red carpet.Red carpets are terrifying! It’s a gantlet of flash bulbs and people shouting your name.It’s not even shouting my name — it’s more like whoever I’m talking to is looking past me to see if there’s somebody more famous coming up so they can quickly wrap up whatever they’re doing with me. That’s been my experience.You said that before “The Whale,” many of your parts were written specifically for an Asian actress. Is that still the case?“Showing Up,” no. Wes’s movie, no. “The Menu,” definitely not, because she was written as Scandinavian. But I never go into it with an agenda of like, “OK, I’m going to turn the stereotype on its head.” I’m always trying to service the script, and however people want to take it, I have no control over that. Even with Elsa in “The Menu,” I thought she was a very dominating character, but during an interview, somebody was asking a question about Asian stereotypes, and she was also Asian. She was like, “Your character reminded me of a maid.” I was like, “I’m sorry, what are you talking about?”It’s a shame, honestly, to always be viewing the world and looking for that. You can always bend things in that way if you want to, but it’s not something that I can really spend too much energy trying to anticipate. But I’m also a little hesitant to get on a soapbox about things. My goal is not to be president of the Asian American student body — I just want to do good work and just leave it at that. More

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      Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert Win DGA Award for ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’

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      The duo triumphed for “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” The guild’s winner has won the best director Academy Award 17 of the last 20 times.BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — The Directors Guild of America gave its top prize for feature-film directing on Saturday night to Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan for their sci-fi hit, “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” starring Michelle Yeoh as the unlikely savior of an embattled multiverse. It is only the third time in DGA history that a duo has won the best-director prize, after Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins (“West Side Story” from 1961) and Joel and Ethan Coen (the 2007 “No Country for Old Men”).“What the hell?” a gobsmacked Kwan said while accepting their prize at the ceremony, held at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills.Scheinert, who said months ago that he had never expected their unusual film to become a major awards contender, was similarly stunned. “This is crazy!” he said.“Everything Everywhere” is the second film co-directed by Scheinert and Kwan, who began their career in music videos before making the leap to the big screen with their 2016 film “Swiss Army Man,” starring Daniel Radcliffe as a flatulent corpse.Their point of view is far quirkier than what the Directors Guild tends to go for, but earlier in the night, Kwan said he had been taught to think that being a director was more like being a party host than a general, and thanked his crew “for bringing their best selves to our ridiculous, absurd, beautiful, personal party.”Scheinert and Kwan triumphed over stiff competition, including Steven Spielberg (“The Fabelmans”), who is the most honored filmmaker in DGA history, with 13 nominations and three wins. The other nominees were Todd Field (“Tár”), Martin McDonagh (“The Banshees of Inisherin”) and Joseph Kosinski (“Top Gun: Maverick”).Next month’s best-director race at the Oscars will present another competitive matchup, with the same men nominated except for Kosinski, who was replaced by “Triangle of Sadness” helmer Ruben Ostlund. Still, Scheinert and Kwan can now be presumed to have the edge in that race, since the DGA winner has won the best director Oscar 17 of the last 20 times.Though no women were nominated in the feature-directing race, the DGA award for documentary filmmaking went to Sara Dosa for “Fire of Love,” about volcano-obsessed scientists. And the DGA prize for the best first-time filmmaker went to Charlotte Wells for the father-daughter drama “Aftersun,” which received an Oscar nomination for lead actor Paul Mescal. Since “The Lost Daughter” director Maggie Gyllenhaal won the same DGA trophy last season, this is the first time the first-timers’ award has gone to female filmmakers in back-to-back years.Here are the top winners. For the complete list, go to dga.org:Feature: Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”First-Time Feature: Charlotte Wells, “Aftersun”Documentary: Sara Dosa, “Fire of Love”Television Movies and Limited Series: Helen Shaver, “Station Eleven” (“Who’s There”)Dramatic Series: Sam Levinson, “Euphoria” (“Stand Still Like the Hummingbird”)Comedy Series: Bill Hader, “Barry” (“710N”) More

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      Hugh Hudson, Director of ‘Chariots of Fire,’ Dies at 86

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      His first film — about two runners, one Christian, one Jewish, who compete at the 1924 Summer Olympics — won four Oscars, including for best picture.Hugh Hudson, a director whose first feature film, “Chariots of Fire,” won four Oscars in 1982, including for best picture, died on Friday in London. He was 86.His family announced the death to the British news media but did not cite a cause.“Chariots of Fire,” based on the true story of two British sprinters who competed at the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris, was nominated for seven Oscars and won four, including for the composer Vangelis’s musical score and for the screenplay by Colin Welland, as well as for costume design. Mr. Hudson was nominated for best director but lost to Warren Beatty, the director of “Reds.”“Hugh Hudson was the fulcrum around which ‘Chariots of Fire’ was built,” David Puttnam, the film’s producer, wrote on Twitter after Mr. Hudson’s death.Mr. Hudson had an affinity for the leading characters of his film: Eric Liddell, a devout Christian who resisted pressure to run in the 100-meter race at the Olympics because the heats took place on Sunday, the Sabbath; and Harold Abrahams, the son of a Lithuanian Jew who vowed to use running to fight antisemitism. Each man won a gold medal — Mr. Liddell for the 400-meter race, which was held on a weekday, and Mr. Abrahams for the 100-meter sprint.“I think David Puttnam chose me because he sensed that I’d relate to the themes of class and racial prejudice,” Mr. Hudson told The Guardian in 2012. “I’d been sent to Eton” — the prestigious all-boys boarding school — “because my family had gone there for generations, but I hated all the prejudice.”To play Liddell and Abrahams, Mr. Puttnam refused to cast stars; instead, he chose Ian Charleson and Ben Cross, who were both best known for their television work.“If I put stars in it, the film would never have been successful,” he told the newspaper The Jewish Chronicle in 2011. “With unknown actors, you look at them afresh.”The most famous sequence in “Chariots of Fire,” which depicts about two dozen young men running on a beach in slow motion, is seen during the opening credits.20th Century Fox, via Everett CollectionThe most famous sequence of the movie is seen during the opening credits: about two dozen young men, clad in white shirts and shorts, running on a beach in slow motion, their faces creased with pain and exhilaration.During the shoot, on the West Sands Beach in St. Andrews, Scotland, Mr. Hudson blasted Vangelis’s “L’Enfant” over loudspeakers. He wanted it to be the film’s theme, but Vangelis promised to compose something original, according to the online publication Art of the Title.The result was an instrumental blend of acoustic piano and synthesizer that provided a lush, pulsating accompaniment to the dramatic scene of young men in training. The song spent 28 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, peaking at No. 1.Hugh Donaldson-Hudson was born on Aug. 25, 1936, in London to Michael Donaldson-Hudson, an insurance broker, and Jacynth (Ellerton) Donaldson-Hudson. His parents divorced when he was young. He attended a boarding school before entering Eton, where he dropped “Donaldson” from his surname.He served in the British Army’s Royal Dragoon Guards and worked in advertising in the late 1950s before he started making documentaries and television commercials, some for Ridley Scott Associates. Alan Parker, who also worked for Mr. Scott, hired Mr. Hudson as a second-unit director on “Midnight Express,” his 1978 film about an American student imprisoned for trying to smuggle hashish out of Turkey. Mr. Puttnam was one of that film’s producers.Mr. Hudson’s best-known commercials included one in which Joan Collins splatters herself with a glass of Cinzano white wine, to the delight of another actor, Leonard Rossiter, seated beside her on an airplane; another showed robots building Fiat Stradas in a factory in Turin, Italy, to the music of Figaro’s entrance aria from “The Barber of Seville.”Mr. Hudson followed “Chariots of Fire,” with “Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes” (1984), which received three Oscar nominations, including one for Ralph Richardson for best supporting actor. Writing in The New York Times, Vincent Canby called it an “unusually intelligent and serious entertainment for the mass market.”But his next film, “Revolution” (1985), starring Al Pacino as a fur trapper caught up in the American Revolution, was considered a flop.His other films, none of which did well at the box office, included “My Life So Far” (1999), about a family’s life on an estate in Scotland after World War I; “I Dreamed of Africa” (2000), the story of a divorced Italian socialite who moves to Kenya; and “Finding Altamira” (2016), about the discovery of Paleolithic cave paintings in northern Spain in 1879.In 2011, Mr. Hudson made a documentary for BBC Four, “Rupture: A Matter of Life or Death,” about his wife, the actress Maryam d’Abo, who had recovered from a near-fatal brain aneurysm.Ms. d’Abo survives him, as does a son, Thomas, from his marriage to Susan Michie, which ended in divorce.In 2012, “Chariots of Fire” was adapted by the writer Mike Bartlett as a stage play in London, first at the Hampstead Theater and then at the Gielgud Theater on the West End.The stage version was Mr. Hudson’s idea, to coincide with London’s hosting of the Summer Olympics that year. “Issues of faith, of refusal to compromise, standing up for one’s beliefs, achieving something for the sake of it, with passion, and not just for fame or financial gain,” he told The London Evening Standard at the time, “are even more vital today.” More

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      2023 Oscar Nominees Luncheon: Tom Cruise’s Arrival Causes a Stir

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      The “Top Gun: Maverick” star and producer is mobbed as Austin Butler, Angela Bassett, Ke Huy Quan and others angle to chat with him.The “Elvis” star Austin Butler finally got an audience with Tom Cruise.Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesFor the privileged few embarking on an Oscar campaign, the path to a nomination asks you to hobnob with so many of the same people that over the course of many months, your competitors can begin to feel like classmates.But on Monday afternoon, at a luncheon held in Beverly Hills for this year’s Oscar nominees, the arrival of a new student caused quite a stir.That would be Tom Cruise, nominated this year as a producer of the megahit best-picture contender “Top Gun: Maverick.” He was among the first notable names to walk into the ballroom of the Beverly Hilton. The 60-year-old star had sat out both the Golden Globes and the Critics Choice Awards this season, so many of his fellow nominees were encountering him for the first time. Before long, the ballroom had turned into a massive meet-and-greet.Together in the ballroom crush: from left, Michelle Williams, Hong Chau, Steven Spielberg, Jamie Lee Curtis and Cruise. Sinna Nasseri for The New York Times“The Fabelmans” castmates Judd Hirsch and Michelle Williams shared a moment.Roger Kisby for The New York Times“I love you, I love you, oh my God!” said the “Everything Everywhere All at Once” star Ke Huy Quan, who hopped in place, exclaiming, “I want a picture with this man!” before seizing a selfie with Cruise. Director Guillermo del Toro went over for an embrace, as did the nominated actors Brendan Fraser, Angela Bassett and Michelle Williams. Cruise even posed for pictures with Steven Spielberg, a once-frequent collaborator whom the star has not been publicly photographed with in over a decade.The nominees luncheon is supposed to be an egalitarian affair where big stars and behind-the-scenes technicians are on equal footing, but there was no mistaking Cruise as the ballroom’s top dog: He had the gravitational pull of the sun and its burnt-orange countenance, too. Any of the nominees who might have pulled focus from Cruise had declined to attend: Original-song contenders Lady Gaga and Rihanna were busy with other obligations (including, for the latter, a just-concluded Super Bowl stint), and even surprise best-actress nominee Andrea Riseborough was missing in action.A caterer bringing out appetizers.Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesJerzy Skolimowski, the director of “EO,” taking a break.Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesStill, simply making it to Cruise took some time: In the schmoozy hour before lunch was served, he was so mobbed by his fellow nominees that he was hardly able to move more than a few feet. I watched for a while as “Elvis” star Austin Butler drifted with slow, inexorable determination toward Cruise, who finally pulled the younger man toward him by clamping a hand on his shoulder like a stapler. For several minutes, they were locked in such a tight bro-embrace that it was impossible to discern what they were talking about (or, more important, whether Butler was still speaking in his “Elvis” drawl).What would Lydia Tár think? Cate Blanchett at the event.Roger Kisby for The New York TimesSo instead, I made my way to “Top Gun: Maverick” producer Jerry Bruckheimer, who observed the scene serenely just a few feet away. “It’s my first time at the luncheon,” said the newly nominated producer, who’s better known for making explosive action movies than Oscar fare. “After 50 years in the business, I finally get here.”Malala Yousafzai, there on behalf of a documentary short, speaking with “The Whale” star Brendan Fraser.Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesA supporting actress nominee in the house: Stephanie Hsu of “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesIt was not the first time at the luncheon for songwriter Diane Warren, who has been nominated for an Oscar 13 times before and is back in contention this year for the song “Applause,” from the film “Tell It Like a Woman.”“It’s my favorite day,” Warren said. “No one’s a loser yet, everybody’s a winner.” I noted that Warren had received an honorary Oscar in November, and asked whether it had dimmed her desire to win a competitive statuette. “No, I still want to win,” she said, grinning. “He wants a friend!”Angela Bassett (“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”) got time with Cruise while the “Top Gun: Maverick” screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie and Butler chatted. Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesAs the nominees and their guests took their seats to nosh on mushroom risotto, the academy president, Janet Yang, came to the stage and addressed the fallout from the organization’s handling of the Will Smith slap at last year’s ceremony.“It was inadequate,” Yang said. “We learned from this that the academy must be fully transparent and accountable in our actions, and particularly in times of crisis, we must act swiftly, compassionately and decisively.”One unrelated tweak has already been made: Unlike last year, when eight below-the-line Oscars were presented just before the telecast began, Yang promised that each category would be aired live during the March 12 telecast. Because of that, Yang pleaded with the nominees to keep their speeches short: “We need to be sensitive to our running time,” she said. “This is live television, after all.”Nominees from “Everything Everywhere All at Once” included, from left, Jamie Lee Curtis, directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, and producer Jonathan Wang.Roger Kisby for The New York TimesSpielberg and Ke Huy Quan, who as a child starred in the director’s “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.”Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesWith that settled, the nominees were called one by one to the front of the stage, where they would pose together for one massive “class photo.” The first name announced was Jamie Lee Curtis, who had earned her first Oscar nomination this year for “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”“I’ve been acting since I was 19 and I’m 64 — do the math,” Curtis told me. “That’s many years of watching this photograph being taken.” Her late parents, the actors Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, had both been Oscar nominees. “To be connected through this legacy of their work and my work and now being included here, it’s very powerful,” she said.Michelle Yeoh (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”) and Brendan Gleeson (“The Banshees of Inisherin”) posed for photographers.Roger Kisby for The New York TimesBrian Tyree Henry (“Causeway”) made his way into the ballroom.Roger Kisby for The New York TimesEventually, with all the nominees assembled,  the producer and academy governor DeVon Franklin counted down to a flashbulb — pop! — then counted down again as the academy photographer took another picture. “All right, three more,” Franklin said.“I’ve got one more expression,” shouted best-actor nominee Colin Farrell (“The Banshees of Inisherin”).Moments earlier, Farrell had been in an animated conversation with Warren, who was standing on the riser behind him. When the pictures were finished and the attendees started to make their way out of the ballroom, I asked Warren what they had discussed.“We talked about how we both did very badly at school,” she said, “and now here we are, at the coolest graduation picture ever.”Spielberg with Cruise, a longtime star of his.Sinna Nasseri for The New York Times More

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      How the Oscars and Grammys Thrive on the Lie of Meritocracy

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      Despite all the markers of excellence, contenders like Danielle Deadwyler, Viola Davis and Beyoncé weren’t recognized for the highest honors. Niche awards don’t suffice.I didn’t see it coming, but maybe I should have.That refrain has been popping into my head repeatedly since learning that neither Viola Davis (“The Woman King”) nor Danielle Deadwyler (“Till”) was nominated for the best actress Oscar and that Andrea Riseborough and Ana de Armas had emerged as this year’s spoilers.It came to mind again on Sunday night when the Grammys awarded Harry Styles’s “Harry’s House” album of the year, not Beyoncé’s “Renaissance.” Though she made history that night as the most Grammy-winning artist of all time, this was Beyoncé’s fourth shutout from the industry’s most coveted category and another stark reminder that the last Black woman to take home that award was Lauryn Hill — 24 years ago. This time the message was loud and clear: Beyoncé, one of the most prolific and transformative artists of the 21st century, can win only in niche categories. Her music — a continually evolving and genre-defying sound — still can’t be seen as the standard-bearer for the universal.The music and movie industries differ in many ways, but their prizes are similarly determined by the predominantly older white male members of the movie and recording academies. Though both organizations have made concerted efforts in recent years to diversify their voting bodies in terms of age, race and gender, Black women artists, despite their ingenuity, influence and, in Beyoncé’s case, unparalleled innovation, continue to be denied their highest honors.This trend is no indication of the quality of their work but rather a reflection of something else: the false myth of meritocracy upon which these institutions, their ceremonies and their gatekeepers thrive.It is true that Black women, dating to Hattie McDaniel for “Gone With the Wind” (1939), have won the Academy Award for best supporting actress. And while it took a half-century for Whoopi Goldberg to receive an Oscar in the same category (for “Ghost”), over the past 20 years, seven Black women have won in this category, including Davis, and this year, Angela Bassett is a front-runner as well.Viola Davis in “The Woman King.” Because of the film’s critical and commercial reception, Oscar watchers thought she would be nominated. Instead, she was snubbed. Sony PicturesBut, in a way, this is an example of rewarding the niche. What’s being honored is a character whose function is in service to a film’s plot and protagonist. She is neither a movie’s emotional center nor primarily responsible for propelling its narrative. Such heavy lifting is why I think it made sense for Michelle Williams, whom many considered a lock for an Oscar for best supporting actress for “The Fabelmans,” to campaign as a lead instead. “Although I haven’t seen the movie,” she told The New York Times, “the scenes that I read, the scenes that I prepped, the scenes that we shot, the scenes that I’m told are still in the movie, are akin to me with experiences that I have had playing roles considered lead.”Interviews With the Oscar NomineesKerry Condon: An ardent animal lover, the supporting actress Oscar nominee for “The Banshees of Inisherin” said that she channeled grief from her dog’s death into her performance.Michelle Yeoh: The “Everything Everywhere All at Once” star, nominated for best actress, said she was “bursting with joy” but “a little sad” that previous Asian actresses hadn’t been recognized.Angela Bassett: The actress nearly missed the announcement because of troubles with her TV. She tuned in just in time to find out that she was nominated for her supporting role in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”Austin Butler: In discussing his best actor nomination, the “Elvis” star said that he wished Lisa Marie Presley, who died on Jan. 12, had been able to celebrate the moment with him.In the past, academy voters might have said there weren’t enough Black women in leading roles to consider. But “Till” and “The Woman King” disprove that. So we’re left with other, more traditionally meritocratic arguments about who deserves to be nominated for best actress — the quality of the individual performance, the critical response to a film, and a decent budget to market and campaign for Oscar consideration. Yet this year, even those measures suddenly seemed to be thrown out the window.Instead, in the case of Andrea Riseborough’s surprising nod for “To Leslie,” we saw a new Oscar strategy playing out before our eyes. A groundswell of fellow actors, including A-listers like Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet and even Cate Blanchett, who would go on to be nominated herself, publicly endorsed Riseborough’s performance on social media, at screenings and even at a prize ceremony. Since only 218 of the 1,302 members of the academy’s acting branch needed to rank a candidate first to secure a nomination, in time, that momentum translated into a nomination upset. That, in turn, led to a backlash, a review by the academy to make sure none of its campaign guidelines had been violated, and a backlash to the backlash, with Christina Ricci and Riseborough’s “To Leslie” co-star Marc Maron calling out the academy for its investigation. “So it’s only the films and actors that can afford the campaigns that deserve recognition?” Ricci wrote in a now-deleted Instagram post. “Feels elitist and exclusive and frankly very backward to me.”What fascinated me, however, was that what was being framed as a grass-roots campaign to circumvent studio marketing machines revealed another inside game. A racially homogeneous network of white Hollywood stars appeared to vote in a small but significant enough bloc to ensure their candidate was nominated.And while that explains how an Oscar campaign can be both nontraditional and elitist, it also underscores the other obstacles that Black actresses, in particular, and actresses of color in general, have to surmount just to be nominated, let alone win. Gina Prince-Bythewood’s “The Woman King” was so critically praised for its filmmaking and masterly performances and was such a commercially successful film that Davis was expected (at the very least) to garner her third nomination in the best actress category.Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe in “Blonde.” The film was widely panned.NetflixIn contrast, Andrew Dominik’s “Blonde,” starring de Armas, was so heavily panned for its brutal and sexist depiction of Marilyn Monroe that I assumed the prerelease chatter about her performance would have dampened by the time Oscar voting began. For more than any other film with a best actress contender this year, “Blonde” raises the question: Shouldn’t a protagonist have depth or multidimensionality for that actor’s performance to be noteworthy? As conceived by Dominik, Monroe merely flits from injury to injury, all in the service of making her downfall inevitable.Such representations reveal another pattern: Oscar voters continue to reward women’s emotional excess more than their restraint. In most films with best actress nominations this year, women’s anger as outbursts is a common thread. “Tár” and even “To Leslie” examines the dangerous consequences of such fury; “The Fabelmans” positions it as a maternal and artistic contradiction for Williams’s character; and “Everything Everywhere All at Once” brilliantly explores it as both a response to IRS bureaucratic inefficacy and intergenerational tensions between a Chinese immigrant mother and her queer, Asian American daughter. “Blonde” is again an exception, for de Armas’s Monroe expresses no external rage but sinks into depression and self-loathing, never directing her frustration at the many men who abuse her.Within that cinematic context, I wondered if it was possible to applaud Deadwyler for playing a character like Mamie Till-Mobley. Unlike the main characters of the other films, Till-Mobley, in real life, had to repress her rational rage over the gruesome murder of her son, Emmett, to find justice and protect his legacy. Onscreen, Deadwyler captured that paradox by portraying Till-Mobley’s constantly shifting self and her struggle to privately grieve her son’s death while simultaneously being asked to speak on behalf of a burgeoning civil rights movement. If words like “nuanced,” “subtle,” “circumspect” or “introspective” garner leading men Oscar attention (how else do we explain Colin Farrell’s nod?), female protagonists are often lauded for falling apart.Deadwyler and Whoopi Goldberg in “Till.” The lead’s repressed rage stands in contrast with the emotional outbursts of the nominated performances.Lynsey Weatherspoon/Orion Pictures, via Associated PressBut even that assumes that all women’s emotions are treated equally, when the truth is that rage itself is racially coded. Both “Till” and “The Woman King” depict Black women’s rage as an individual emotion and a collective dissent, a combination that deviates from many on-screen representations of female anger as a downward spiral and self-destructive.Commenting on such differential treatment, the “Till” director Chinonye Chukwu critiqued Hollywood on Instagram for its “unabashed misogyny towards Black women” after the academy snubbed her film. Likewise, in an essay for The Hollywood Reporter, Prince-Bythewood asked, “What is this inability of Academy voters to see Black women, and their humanity, and their heroism, as relatable to themselves?”It’s been over 20 years since Halle Berry won the best actress Oscar for her “Monster’s Ball” performance as a Black mother who grieves the loss of her son through alcohol and sex. The fact that she remains the only Black woman to have won this award is ridiculous. “I do feel completely heartbroken that there’s no other woman standing next to me in 20 years,” Berry reflected in the run-up to the Oscars last year. “I thought, like everybody else, that night meant a lot of things would change.”The difference between then and now is that there are far more Black women directors and complex Black women characters on the big screen than ever before. Maybe, next year, the academy members will get behind one of those actors. Then again, maybe I should know better. More

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      ‘Cinema Sabaya’ Review: Conversations and Compassion in a Small Town in Israel

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      Israel’s Oscar entry is a documentary-style chamber piece about a video workshop for Arab and Jewish women whose conclusions feel, well, tired.“Cinema Sabaya,” Israel’s international feature entry for this year’s Oscars (though not nominated), looks and feels like a behind-the-scenes documentary. It’s not — the actors aren’t playing themselves and the drama is scripted. But the film resides in the porous boundary between fiction and reality, mounting a chamber piece of sorts not unlike “Women Talking,” but enriched by naturalistic flair that eschews didacticism.Dana Ivgy plays Rona, a filmmaker from Tel Aviv who is running a video workshop for Arab and Jewish women in a small town in northern Israel. The film’s director, Orit Fouks Rotem, was inspired by her mother’s participation in a similar course; she went on to organize sessions for other women, which — along with testimonies from the actors — inform her fictional rendition. In “Cinema Sabaya,” each member is given a hand-held device to complete assignments that involve capturing moments from their lives beyond the classroom. But using themselves as the grist of the mill for their training means revealing themselves as well — their struggles with tradition, sexuality, domesticity — while their homework is often blown up on a big screen and shared with the others.Discussions that double as group therapy sessions are captured with observational distance, while hand-held home-video footage punctuates these subdued symposiums, adding to the film’s documentary-style designs.Tensions arise by dint of the group’s diversity. The punchy Nahed (Aseel Farhat) is a student and nonpracticing Muslim, while Awatef (Marlene Bajali) is a septuagenarian traditionalist. The hesitant Souad (Joanna Said) is trapped in an unhappy marriage, which triggers conjugal horror stories from a divorced woman, Yelena (Yulia Tagil), and the remarried Gila (Ruth Landau).The elephant in the room is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its attendant biases, which emerge during a heated session in which the bubbly Eti (Orit Samuel), a middle-aged Jewish woman, confesses to her fear of Islamic terrorists. The workshop is ultimately a unity exercise premised on the trite axiom that conversation breeds compassion. It’s not an unwelcome reminder, and Rotem’s organic approach steers clear of icky idealism, but its conclusions nevertheless feel worn out. Talking helps, sure, but getting people in the same room is too often the stuff of fiction.Cinema SabayaNot rated. In Hebrew, Arabic and English, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. In theaters. More

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      The Oscars’ Andrea Riseborough Controversy, Explained

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      You’ve got questions about the surprise best-actress nominee, and our awards columnist has the answers (and a few more questions).The seismic Will Smith slap? The jaw-dropping “La La Land”-“Moonlight” mix-up? You can have ’em. I like my Oscar controversies like I like my “Curb Your Enthusiasm” plot lines: small, petty and a little bit deranged.That’s why I’ve been gripped by all the new developments surrounding Andrea Riseborough, who managed a surprise best-actress nomination last month that quickly turned from boon to boondoggle. It’s the story everyone in Hollywood is talking about, though you’d be forgiven for wondering what exactly has gone down or why any of it matters. With that in mind, let’s see if I can find the answers to your questions:Who is Andrea Riseborough?The 41-year-old Brit is a real actor’s actor, the sort of committed thespian who is well-respected by her peers but has mostly flown under the pop-cultural radar. Without even clocking that it was the same actress, you might have seen Riseborough playing Nicolas Cage’s wife in the hallucinogenic “Mandy”; seducing Emma Stone in “Battle of the Sexes”; covering up an accidental death in an episode of “Black Mirror”; or exploring a ruined Earth with Tom Cruise in “Oblivion.”Because Riseborough has played such a wide variety of roles without developing a tangible star persona, she is often described as a “chameleon” or even “unrecognizable,” which is Hollywood-speak for an actress who doesn’t wear eye makeup. Still, the woman is damn castable: She appeared in four movies last year alone, including “To Leslie,” the tiny indie at the heart of this Oscar controversy. Spot the chameleonic Riseborough: Clockwise from top left, in “Oblivion,” “Mandy,” “Black Mirror” and “Battle of the Sexes.”What is “To Leslie”?Directed by Michael Morris, “To Leslie” stars Riseborough as the title character, a hard-drinking West Texan who won the lottery years ago but has blown through her money and torpedoed her relationships in the time since. As her frustrated family and friends wonder what to do with the belligerent Leslie, big questions are bandied about: Is it better to let an addict hit rock bottom or to extend a helping hand? Does there ever come a time when severing family ties should be done for your own good? And hey, is that Stephen Root, the stapler nerd from “Office Space,” playing a leather-daddy biker? (Alongside a glowering Allison Janney, no less!)The film debuted at South by Southwest last March alongside a much more high-profile Oscar contender, “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” and though “To Leslie” received mostly positive reviews, it earned less than $30,000 during its October release. In a year when many specialty films struggled to find an audience in theaters, that box office total was still so low that Riseborough’s co-star, the podcaster Marc Maron, accused the “To Leslie” distributor, Momentum Pictures, of “gross incompetence” on Twitter, then blasted the studio for failing to submit the film for awards consideration by most industry guilds. That sort of negligence might make people want to take matters into their own hands … but we’ll get to that.How is Riseborough’s performance?Though Leslie is a scrappy slip of a person, Riseborough makes a lot of big choices while playing her. It’s a pugnacious, eccentric performance, and though I’m an on-the-record fan of maximalist acting, I should let you know that if this were measured on a scale of 1 (utter naturalism) to 10 (Kristen Wiig as Liza Minnelli trying to turn off a lamp), Riseborough would be pulling an awfully high number.In other words, it’s the sort of big, actressy transformation that awards voters flock to like catnip, and if someone like Charlize Theron or Michelle Williams had de-glammed to play Leslie, there likely would have been Oscar buzz from the beginning. But without box office success or a big name, Riseborough appeared to be a non-starter.What was unusual about her Oscar campaign?A typical Oscar race plays out like a couture-clad season of “Squid Game,” where a large number of hopefuls are winnowed down to a surviving few. To stay in the conversation until the very end, it helps to win critics awards and earn nominations at televised awards shows, and Riseborough lagged on both counts: She hadn’t mustered much more than an Independent Spirit Award nomination and had no deep-pocketed distributor ready to buy For Your Consideration ads on her behalf. By most pundits’ estimation, she was not a serious contender, nor even an on-the-bubble dark horse.Interviews With the Oscar NomineesKerry Condon: An ardent animal lover, the supporting actress Oscar nominee for “The Banshees of Inisherin” said that she channeled grief from her dog’s death into her performance.Michelle Yeoh: The “Everything Everywhere All at Once” star, nominated for best actress, said she was “bursting with joy” but “a little sad” that previous Asian actresses hadn’t been recognized.Angela Bassett: The actress nearly missed the announcement because of troubles with her TV. She tuned in just in time to find out that she was nominated for her supporting role in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”Austin Butler: In discussing his best actor nomination, the “Elvis” star said that he wished Lisa Marie Presley, who died on Jan. 12, had been able to celebrate the moment with him.But during the second week of January, just days before voting for the Oscar nominations began, a cadre of movie stars suddenly took to social media on Riseborough’s behalf. Edward Norton was the first big booster, telling his two million Twitter followers that Riseborough gave “the most fully committed, emotionally deep … physically harrowing performance I’ve seen in a while.” The next day, Gwyneth Paltrow announced on Instagram that “Andrea should win every award there is and all the ones that haven’t been invented yet.”As the week wore on, at least two dozen more celebrities climbed aboard the Riseborough Railroad — from A-listers like Amy Adams, Kate Winslet and Jennifer Aniston to random stowaways like Jenny McCarthy and Tan France — and award watchers started to wonder what the hell was going on. The answer that emerged is that a late-breaking campaign had been waged by Riseborough’s manager, Jason Weinberg, and the actress Mary McCormack, who is married to Morris, the “To Leslie” director, to get the film in front of as many of their famous industry friends as possible.Riseborough, opposite Owen Teague in “To Leslie,” wasn’t even a dark-horse contender until mid-January. Momentum Pictures“The movie cannot afford any FYC ads, so this letter and invitation will have to do instead!” McCormack wrote in one of her mass emails, which were published by Vanity Fair. In a later missive, she said movies like “To Leslie” were an endangered species in need of support, writing, “I worry that unless we all support small independent filmmaking, it’ll just get eaten up by Marvel movies and go away forever.”With those entreaties, McCormack, Weinberg and Riseborough assembled a starry battalion of boosters that eventually included even her best actress competitor Cate Blanchett, who gave Riseborough a shout-out during her televised acceptance speech at the Critics Choice Awards. (This begs the question: Would Lydia Tár have been Team Riseborough? I don’t think the fictional conductor could ever bring herself to endorse a movie about West Texas — they eat too much barbecue there — though I could imagine a scene where she receives McCormack’s mass email, grimaces and then orders an underling to delete it.)Why were people so upset?This was hardly the first time that a contender had taken Oscar promotion into her own hands: Who can forget Melissa Leo’s iconic “Consider” ad campaign, in which the eventual Oscar winner donned furs and posed among pillars like a Blackglama model prowling Hearst Castle? But Riseborough’s team bypassed the FYC-ad industrial complex entirely, opting to wage a weeklong war powered mostly by word of mouth instead of an expensive, multi-month campaign that would have involved round tables, parties, red-carpet appearances, film-festival tributes and endless press hits.It was an unprecedented awards-season gambit, and it worked: When the presenter Riz Ahmed read Riseborough’s name out loud during the Jan. 24 announcement of the Oscar nominations, the journalists in attendance gasped, giggled and oohed like a scandalized sitcom audience. They knew that Riseborough had just pulled off something crazy, and it didn’t take long before rival awards strategists began working the phones, suggesting that her grass-roots campaign may have run afoul of Oscar rules.And as the Riseborough surge sunk in, her surprise nomination was weighed against the snubs of the “Woman King” star Viola Davis and the “Till” lead Danielle Deadwyler: If those two Black actresses had been nominated alongside the “Everything Everywhere All at Once” star Michelle Yeoh, as many pundits were expecting, it would have been the first time in Oscar history that the best actress race featured a majority of women of color.Viola Davis’s performance in “The Woman King” was snubbed in the nominations.Sony Pictures, via Associated PressIn an essay for The Hollywood Reporter published Tuesday, the “Woman King” director, Gina Prince-Bythewood, did not mention Riseborough by name but alluded to the “social capital” that had helped propel her to a nomination. “Black women in this industry, we don’t have that power,” Prince-Bythewood wrote. “There is no groundswell from privileged people with enormous social capital to get behind Black women. There never has been.”Did the campaign break any rules?In a statement released on Jan. 27, the academy announced it would review the campaign procedures of the year’s nominees to make sure none of its guidelines were violated. Though Riseborough and “To Leslie” weren’t mentioned specifically, a reference to grass-roots campaigns in the statement all but confirmed that her nomination was the subject of investigation.Which aspects of the campaign might have earned scrutiny? Online sleuths noticed that a slew of copy-paste phrases — including the description of “To Leslie” as “a small film with a giant heart” — had appeared in social-media posts from the unlikely likes of Mia Farrow, Meredith Vieira and Joe Mantegna. And there was an eyebrow-raising Instagram post from the actress Frances Fisher, soon to be seen tightening Kate Winslet’s corset in the “Titanic” rerelease, who encouraged voters to select Riseborough because “Viola, Michelle, Danielle & Cate are a lock,” though it’s generally forbidden to mention specific competitors in that way.As the controversy began to heat up, wild rumors flew that Riseborough’s nomination could be rescinded. Puck News even wondered, “Was the Andrea Riseborough Oscar Campaign Illegal?” — a headline so breathless that you’d half-expect someone like Paltrow to be hauled before The Hague as an accomplice. (Hey, if you can’t lock someone up for selling jade vagina eggs, maybe they could be arrested for the lesser charge of Oscar meddling. Isn’t that how they got Al Capone?)Have Oscar nominations ever been rescinded before?Rarely, but the last two times it happened, the cause was improper campaigning. In 2014, the academy rescinded Bruce Broughton’s extremely “huh?” original-song nomination from the obscure faith-based film “Alone Yet Not Alone” because he’d leaned on his influence as a former academy governor when soliciting consideration. And in 2017, the academy yanked the nomination for the “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi” sound mixer Greg P. Russell because he had engaged in “telephone lobbying.” It was tempting, then, to wonder if a Riseborough rebuke might change the entire makeup of the best actress race: After all, the Emmys rescinded Peter MacNicol’s 2016 nomination for guest actor in a comedy after learning he had appeared in too many “Veep” episodes to qualify, and then his replacement, the “Girls” guest star Peter Scolari, actually went on to win in the category. But even if the academy had seen fit to give Riseborough the hook, there would be no one to take her place. According to the academy’s bylaws, the race would simply be reduced to the remaining four nominees.So what happens now?On the last day of January, the academy’s chief executive, Bill Kramer, released another statement about the investigation, and though this statement did mention the “To Leslie” awards campaign by name, it concluded that Riseborough’s nomination would not be rescinded. “However, we did discover social media and outreach campaigning tactics that caused concern,” Kramer wrote. “These tactics are being addressed with the responsible parties directly.”It’s unclear who those parties are: The academy didn’t name names, Riseborough hasn’t given an interview since the morning of the nominations, and Fisher’s Instagram post was still up last time I checked. But even if the terms of the scolding are unclear, the far-reaching effects of Riseborough’s curveball campaign have the potential to change the way we think of awards season.For one, a new spotlight has been put on the academy’s vaunted diversity efforts: Is it enough to simply recruit more members of color when so many of the voters remain obstinate, older white people who, for example, told Prince-Bythewood that they’d had no interest in seeing her movie? Of the four acting categories, the best-actress race has proved most hostile to recognizing people of color, and that won’t change until voters recognize the biases they hold when determining whose stories matter.But it also means that next season, just when we think the amount of viable Oscar contenders has shrunk to almost five, a surprise could come from nowhere that completely changes the race. Riseborough pioneered a risky new tactic that other would-be contenders could use to slingshot themselves back into viability. All they’ll need is patience — well, and an improbably starry Rolodex that hopefully has little overlap with Riseborough’s. After all, if Winslet has already called Riseborough “the greatest female performance onscreen I have ever seen in my life,” will we believe her when she says the same thing next year about M3gan? More