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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

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      Home-Cooked Spaghetti Dinners and a Glam Photo Shoot: Eight Unusual Oscar Bids

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      The campaign on behalf of Andrea Riseborough is the latest to provoke controversy, but it’s hardly the most memorable.When the actress Andrea Riseborough wrapped a 19-day shoot on the microbudget indie “To Leslie” in Los Angeles during the height of the pandemic, her hopes probably extended to positive reviews from critics and indie film enthusiasts.But now, after a social media campaign on her behalf by some famous friends, among them Gwyneth Paltrow, Edward Norton and Sarah Paulson, she’s been nominated for an Oscar for best actress — an honor she can keep, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences ruled Tuesday after reviewing the unorthodox lobbying on her behalf.While the regulations around campaigning have become ever murkier in the age of social media, the Riseborough campaign was hardly the first to stretch the rules, which forbid, among other things, mentioning competitors or their films directly or calling academy members personally.Here are eight memorable bids for a statuette that went rogue.1961Chill Wills, ‘The Alamo’After Chill Wills was nominated for best supporting actor for his role as Davy Crockett’s buddy Beekeeper in “The Alamo,” he hired the veteran publicist W.S. “Bow-Wow” Wojciechowicz to run his campaign. Wojciechowicz submitted an ad to Variety with a photo of the film’s cast and text that read, “We of the ‘Alamo’ cast are praying harder — than the real Texans prayed for their lives in the Alamo — for Chill Wills to win the Oscar as best supporting actor.”Variety refused to run it, and John Wayne, the film’s director and star, took out his own ad rebuking Wills that said neither he nor his production company were in any way involved in the effort. (“I am sure his intentions are not as bad as his taste,” Wayne wrote of Wills, who later blamed Wojciechowicz.) After this fiasco — Wills lost to Peter Ustinov for “Spartacus” — it became rare for actors to run their own campaigns, which have since mostly been the purview of studios and teams of publicists.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.1974Candy Clark, ‘American Graffiti’Candy Clark with Charles Martin Smith in “American Graffiti.”Universal PicturesThe nostalgic coming-of-age feature “American Graffiti” included some future big names like Ron Howard, Richard Dreyfuss and Harrison Ford among its ensemble cast, but Candy Clark, then a little-known actress, was the only one to embark on an Oscar campaign. She paid $1,700 to take out a series of quarter-page ads in The Hollywood Reporter and Variety — a strategy that paid off when she was the only member of the film’s cast to be nominated, for best supporting actress. (She lost to a 10-year-old Tatum O’Neal for “Paper Moon.”)1975Liv Ullmann, ‘Scenes From a Marriage’The Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann delivered a standout performance in Ingmar Bergman’s domestic drama “Scenes From a Marriage,” but a potential nomination was tripped up by a technicality that The New York Times likened to a situation “one usually encounters at obscure border stations in Central Asia.” Because a television cut of “Scenes From a Marriage” had premiered on Swedish TV in 1973 — the year before its American theatrical release — it was deemed ineligible for the Oscars thanks to an academy rule that prohibited the film’s being shown on television during the year before its theatrical release.Three of that year’s eventual best actress nominees — Ellen Burstyn (who went on to win), Diahann Carroll and Gena Rowlands — took up Ullmann’s cause, even signing an open letter supporting her right to compete, but the academy stood firm. (Ullmann, now 84, did receive an honorary award from the academy last year.)1986Margaret Avery, ‘The Color Purple’Margaret Avery with Bennet Guillory in “The Color Purple.”Warner Bros.After being nominated for best supporting actress for “The Color Purple,” Margaret Avery used $1,160 of her own money to pay for a Variety ad promoting her performance. Intended to suggest the voice of her character, Shug Avery, it read: “Well God, I guess the time has come fo’ the Academy voters to decide whether I is one of the best supporting actresses this year or not! Either way, thank you, Lord for the opportunity.” Avery was criticized for the ad, which did not reflect the way her character actually spoke in the film. (She lost to Anjelica Huston for “Prizzi’s Honor.”)1988Sally Kirkland, ‘Anna’Sally Kirkland took a letter-writing fiend approach in an effort to score a best actress nomination for her role as a once-famous Czech actress in the small indie “Anna.” Kirkland not only personally wrote letters to academy voters, she also financed her own ad campaign — the film had no budget to do so — and spoke to any and every journalist who asked. Her persistence paid off with a nomination, though she eventually lost to Cher for “Moonstruck.”1991Diane Ladd, ‘Wild at Heart’After she was nominated for David Lynch’s “Wild at Heart,” Diane Ladd — Laura Dern’s mother — decided that the way to voters’ hearts was through a home-cooked spaghetti dinner. She embarked on a one-woman blitz that involved not only writing personalized letters to voters, but also inviting 20 academy members to a screening of her film, accompanied by a spaghetti dinner that she prepared herself. She might have wanted to spend more time perfecting that spaghetti recipe, though — she lost to Whoopi Goldberg, who won for “Ghost.”2011Melissa Leo, ‘The Fighter’Melissa Leo, fourth from right, in a scene from “The Fighter.”Jojo Whilden/Paramount PicturesUnlike other nominees who took matters into their own hands, Melissa Leo was considered the front-runner when she began her campaign to secure a best supporting actress win for the boxing drama “The Fighter.” But she took out her now-infamous “Consider” ads anyway, she told Deadline in 2011, because she was frustrated at not being able to land magazine covers as a 50-year-old woman. The ads, which showed off her glamorous side as she leaned forward in a low-cut black evening gown, presented a stark contrast to the gritty, blue-collar mother and fight manager she played in the film (which was not even mentioned in the ad). There’s no way to say for sure if the strategy helped her chances, but it certainly didn’t hurt — she beat out her co-star Amy Adams, as well as Helena Bonham Carter of “The King’s Speech,” to claim the Oscar.2013Ann Dowd, ‘Compliance’Ann Dowd received stellar reviews for the Craig Zobel thriller “Compliance,” a flop of an indie with such a tiny budget that Dowd was paid just $100 per day for her role. But she believed in her performance, and after raising $13,000 by dipping into her bank account, borrowing money from friends and colleagues and maxing out her credit cards, she mailed DVDs to academy members and placed ads in trade publications in an effort to secure a best supporting actress nomination. While the Oscar recognition proved elusive — Anne Hathaway won that year for “Les Misérables” — the media coverage of her efforts may have helped put her on the radar of directors. (And now she has an Emmy for “The Handmaid’s Tale.”) More

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      Kerry Condon on Her ‘Banshees of Inisherin’ Oscar Nomination

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      Kerry Condon had hoped to be among her horses when last week’s Oscar nominations were announced. If she kept busy tending her farm in Seattle, she figured that no matter the outcome of the early morning announcement, the work required to care for those two animals would help ground her in normalcy. After all, what do they know about Oscar odds?“If I’d hugged them at 5 a.m., they would have been like, ‘It’s almost feed time, where’s our hay?’” she said. “They would have been having none of it!”It didn’t quite go down that way, since work conspired to keep her in Los Angeles, where the Irish actress has lived for the last decade. Still, Condon is hardly complaining: On that fateful Tuesday morning, she received her first Oscar nomination, for Martin McDonagh’s “The Banshees of Inisherin,” in which she plays the feisty but lonely Siobhan, who counsels her brother, Padraic (Colin Farrell), through a feud with his best friend (Brendan Gleeson), fends off an enamored suitor, the oddball Dominic (Barry Keoghan), and wonders if there’s more to life than what can be experienced on the cloistered island where she grew up.It’s a breakthrough role for the 40-year-old Condon, who met me for lunch in Los Angeles just days after her nomination to discuss a career full of ups and downs. “I don’t think anything has ever come easy to me, so I have the opposite of a sense of entitlement,” she said.Though Condon grew up in the country town of Tipperary, she was always keen to make her mark in Hollywood: When she was just 10, she even wrote an unanswered letter to the well-known agent Mike Ovitz, asking him to represent her. (It didn’t work, but you’ve got to admire the chutzpah.) After graduating from the equivalent of high school, Condon worked in theater and could be seen in supporting parts on dramas like “Rome,” “Luck” and “Better Caul Saul,” but the major screen role that would kick her career into a higher gear had been hard to come by until now.“I think she’s probably been better than a lot of the directors and material she’s had to work with,” said McDonagh, who cast Condon in many of his plays and conceived “Banshees” with her in mind. “I always wanted to try and write something for her that would capture how brilliant she is onstage, but in a movie.”The “Banshees” filmmaker Martin McDonagh said the actress has “probably been better than a lot of the directors and material she’s had to work with.”Ariel Fisher for The New York TimesWith her Irish accent and impish sense of humor, Condon has been a welcome presence in every awards ballroom, though all that glad-handing can take its toll, she said: “I’m extremely introverted and I live alone, so when I come back from those things, I need to be hooked up to a drip!” Still, she’s thrilled to have the recognition, excited to be nominated alongside her three castmates, and ready for whatever happens to her screen career.“If it doesn’t change, and I still have my little peaks and valleys, at least I’ll be more equipped,” Condon said. “And I’ll also know that passes as quick as the good fortune passes.”Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.How did you feel the day before the Oscar nominations were announced?Interviews With the Oscar NomineesMichelle 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.”Andrea Riseborough: The star of “To Leslie” received her first Oscar nomination thanks to a campaign by some famous friends that has since attracted controversy and scrutiny. Here is what the actress said about being nominated.Ke Huy Quan: A former childhood star, the “Everything Everywhere All at Once” actor said that the news of his best supporting actor nomination was surreal.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 busy in my house and I felt occupied, but as the day went on, my body was feeling really nervous and I was like, “Damn that subconscious! It’s obviously on my mind.” But I did go on a beautiful hike by myself and I clocked the moment, thinking, “I’m actually really happy right now. So just remember that if it doesn’t work out tomorrow, I was happy today and I didn’t have it.”Did you sleep well that night?I did but I could sleep through a nuclear bomb. I’m telling you, they should study me. I was going to turn off my cellphone and have my manager give the news to me like a regular business day — I was trying to be all cool so if I didn’t get it, I could take that moment privately and get myself together. But Colin called me and was like, “Do you want to watch it together?” Then I had to debate that for three hours because I was like, “What if one of us gets it and the other one doesn’t? Do I want to experience this massive moment with other people?” At the last minute, I said, “I’ll go to your house and watch it.”And on West Coast time, that means getting up before dawn.It was the weirdest thing getting up in the dark and scurrying out the door. Honest to God, it felt like we were doing something illegal! It’s just so surreal to be at anyone’s house at 5 in the morning, sober and in your pajamas, but I’m really glad I shared it with other people because it felt nice to get hugs in that moment. Whereas if I’d have been on my own, it would have been amazing, but it also would have been like, “God, Kerry, you’re such a loner!”In a statement released that morning, you described the nomination as “a dream come true.”I don’t think there’s anything wrong with admitting that you’re ambitious. It’s not like I’m Lady Macbeth and I’m stabbing the competition. I watched the Oscars when I was a kid and it’s always been on my radar. At the same time, was my happiness dependent on this? No, I’m not that much of a superficial person.You’ve worked with Martin McDonagh several times on plays. What took him so long to write a great film role for you?I don’t know, but I never got on his case about it. I was just really happy that we had been friends for so long. If I’d say, “Oh, I’m up for this job, I’m down to the last two,” and then I wouldn’t get it — which was the story of my life for a few years — Martin was one of the very few people in my life who’d say, “You’re great, and that guy’s a terrible director.” He always kept me going with things like that, and that was enough. I remember Martin got me a lovely bracelet saying, “It’s the journey that matters in the end,” and I still have it.Condon with Colin Farrell in a scene from “Banshees.” Playing his lonely sister in the film did take its toll: “That line to Siobhan of, ‘No wonder no one likes you,’ that was starting to ring in my ears.”Searchlight PicturesHow did you feel when he offered you “Banshees”?I can’t remember because my dog died just before Covid, and the lead-up to my dog dying was a whole thing. I was very distracted, and on the horizon was this possible “Banshees” thing, but I couldn’t think beyond my dog. I paused everything. I said to my agent a year before that, “I’m not doing any jobs, I have to see this through. I don’t care what I’m missing, I have to be with her.” It was hard because I lived alone with her, and when you don’t have children, she was just everything to me.That death had such a profound effect on me that it made me go, “Why aren’t people crying all the time? Why aren’t people talking about the fact that we all just disappear?” I remember thinking it was like when you lose your virginity: You hear about sex and you’re like, “What is that?” And then you have it, and the world cracks open, and there’s no going back. That’s how it felt with grief: I was like, “Oh, this is something I am going to have to deal with throughout my life.”Is that something you were able to bring to Siobhan, who has been taking care of her brother since their parents passed away?That was my starting point. I felt that Siobhan was stuck in that grief and not able to grow and be her own person because she had to fill the mother shoes with Padraic. Grief is a lonely journey. After a while, you can’t keep going on about it, because people are like, “I don’t know what you want me to say.” It is something you have to go through alone, but Martin had to control me in that because I think it was getting too sad sometimes. He was like, “She has to see that there’s a possibility of a change and that there’s more to life. There has to be an element of hope.” So I felt like it really came at the perfect time in my life.It’s ironic that Siobhan is so hostile to her brother’s donkey, since you’re such an animal lover in real life.That was really hard for me! I was always saying to Martin, “I feel like Siobhan would be happier if she would just let the animals in the house, and if she liked animals as much as I do.” And he was like, “I don’t know if that would be enough to fulfill her life.” But I’m different. I feel like animals are enough to fulfill my life.People have really responded to the scene where Dominic confesses his crush to Siobhan. That clip has trended on Twitter several times, and you and Barry are both terrific in it.I think he’s manipulating the internet — I’m like, “Somebody’s behind this, and I bet you any money, it’s Barry!” That was the last day of the shoot and the last scene I did. I had always imagined that Dominic had done things to Siobhan over the years that really unnerved her, like maybe stolen some of her clothes off the washing line. But at the same time, she was evolved enough to be kind to him in that moment, which made her even more beautiful a character.“My goal has always been to be an actress, never to get married and have children,” Condon said. “I don’t think it’s something I should do just because I’m a woman. I’ve never followed conventions, and I’m hardly going to start now.”Ariel Fisher for The New York TimesWhy do you think Siobhan gets so angry when Dominic asks why she never married?Oh, that’s a good one, because it’s hitting a nerve. I talked about that with Martin: “Are we saying that she’s a virgin?” We both came to the decision that she hadn’t had sex with anyone, because it’s Catholic Ireland and that would have been unheard-of, but maybe somebody came from the mainland one time and there were the very startings of a romance. But she couldn’t leave with this person because she was stuck on this island, so it was shut down very quickly. So when she’s asked, “Were you never married, and were you never wild?” I think it really irked her that she never had the opportunity.Have you ever felt a loneliness like Siobhan’s?Because I was never married, does that ever bother me? No. I could be monogamous, but I don’t really care about marriage, and I don’t really know why everyone cares about it.I’m kind of ambivalent about it myself, although I’m the first person to cry at weddings.I get emotional at weddings, too, which is so stupid. Sometimes I’m like, “There she goes, my friend’s gone. Her loyalty’s to her husband now, and there goes our years.” But my goal has always been to be an actress, never to get married and have children. I don’t think it’s something I should do just because I’m a woman. I’ve never followed conventions, and I’m hardly going to start now.How did you feel when you wrapped the film?Funnily enough, I was a little bit glad because by the end of it, it was starting to take its toll. That line to Siobhan of, “No wonder no one likes you,” that was starting to ring in my ears a little bit. And I know for Colin it was taking its toll too, with all the rejection and thinking, “Am I stupid?” If you have to stay in those spaces long enough, you can’t help but have them in your thinking. I found myself coming home some evenings after a great day, and all of a sudden, I’d just be bawling for five minutes. I didn’t even know why I was crying. I just knew there was a heaviness to it, and I was ready to let it go.How did it feel once the movie returned to your life in such a grand fashion, from a Venice Film Festival premiere on to awards season?Looking back, it has been an absolute whirlwind since Venice. Everything has happened super, super fast — so fast that I’m getting nervous for the Oscars coming, since it’s going to be all over then.At least you’ve got a few weeks to savor things until it happens.But still, things end. And isn’t that sad? More

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      Academy Won’t Rescind Andrea Riseborough’s Best Actress Nomination

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      The organization investigated whether an Oscars campaign for the “To Leslie” actress Andrea Riseborough had violated rules.The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said on Tuesday that it would not rescind Andrea Riseborough’s Oscar nomination for best actress, after an investigation into whether an Oscar campaign on her behalf violated the organization’s rules.“The academy has determined the activity in question does not rise to the level that the film’s nomination should be rescinded,” Bill Kramer, the academy’s chief executive officer, said in a statement. “However, we did discover social media and outreach campaigning tactics that caused concern. These tactics are being addressed with the responsible parties directly.”The academy declined to say who the responsible parties were.Ms. Riseborough, a respected British actress, was a surprise nominee last week for her performance as a former lottery winner battling addiction in the little-seen drama “To Leslie.” The film earned just $27,000 at the box office during its initial release in October. Yet Ms. Riseborough became the talk of Hollywood when fellow actors began publicly praising her performance during the Oscar nominating season.Cate Blanchett mentioned her when accepting a Critics Choice award. Kate Winslet, during a virtual question-and-answer session with Ms. Riseborough and the film’s director, called Ms. Riseborough’s work “the greatest female performance onscreen I have ever seen in my life.”But the campaign soon drew criticism, with people questioning whether those lobbying on Ms. Riseborough’s behalf did so by calling members personally — an Oscars no-no — and hosting informal gatherings that didn’t comply with academy standards.A social media post by the veteran actress Frances Fisher raised eyebrows because it named other actresses in Oscar contention, suggesting that their nominations were secure and that people should vote for Ms. Riseborough instead. On Jan. 14, Ms. Fisher wrote that voters should select Ms. Riseborough since “Viola, Michelle, Danielle & Cate are a lock for their outstanding work.” She was referring to Viola Davis, Michelle Williams, Danielle Deadwyler and Ms. Blanchett.Ms. Davis and Ms. Deadwyler did not receive nominations. Mentioning competitors or their films directly while campaigning is forbidden.According to Mr. Kramer’s statement, the review by the academy made it “apparent that components of the regulations must be clarified to help create a better framework for respectful, inclusive and unbiased campaigning.”He added that any changes to the rules would be made after the Oscars telecast on March 12.“The academy strives to create an environment where votes are based solely on the artistic and technical merits of the eligible films and achievements,” he said. More

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      Andrea Riseborough’s Path to Surprise Oscar Nomination Is Scrutinized

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      Andrea Riseborough got the nod for the little-seen “To Leslie.” The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is reviewing whether her A-list campaign violated rules.When the Oscar nominations were announced last week, one of the most surprising was Andrea Riseborough’s inclusion in the best actress category.Ms. Riseborough’s portrayal of a former lottery winner battling addiction in the little-seen “To Leslie” had received scant recognition on the awards circuit. Few critics included the film on their best-of-the-year lists, and it made just $27,000 at the box office during its initial release in October.Yet just as voting for the Oscars began, a number of A-list actors started lauding Ms. Riseborough’s performance publicly. “Andrea should win every award there is and all the ones that haven’t been invented yet,” Gwyneth Paltrow wrote on Instagram, joining dozens of actors like Edward Norton and Susan Sarandon who lavished praise on Ms. Riseborough. Kate Winslet hosted a screening of the film, and during a virtual question-and-answer session with Ms. Riseborough and the film’s director, Michael Morris, called Ms. Riseborough’s work “the greatest female performance onscreen I have ever seen in my life.”“The thing that feels most exciting is being acknowledged by your community,” Ms. Riseborough told The New York Times on the day she was nominated. “It’s a marker by which we measure ourselves in so many ways — by those we aspire to be like, or those we admire. So it’s huge.”But what at first seemed like a story of how a grass-roots — though star-studded — word-of-mouth campaign had managed to help a respected actress crash the Oscar party quickly drew backlash.There were soon questions of whether the efforts on behalf of Ms. Riseborough had violated Oscar rules (“Was the Andrea Riseborough Oscar Campaign Illegal?” read a headline in the Hollywood newsletter by Puck’s Matthew Belloni) and whether Ms. Riseborough, who is white, had secured a nomination that may otherwise have gone to a Black actress like Viola Davis (“The Woman King”) or Danielle Deadwyler (“Till”).“We live in a world and work in industries that are so aggressively committed to upholding whiteness and perpetuating an unabashed misogyny towards Black women,” Chinonye Chukwu, the director of “Till,” wrote on Instagram after the nominations. Ms. Chukwu did not mention Ms. Riseborough or “To Leslie” in her post.Interviews With the Oscar NomineesMichelle 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.”Andrea Riseborough: A social media campaign by some famous friends netted the star of “To Leslie” her first Oscar nomination. Here is what she said about being nominated.Ke Huy Quan: A former childhood star, the “Everything Everywhere All at Once” actor said that the news of his best supporting actor nomination was surreal.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.The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will take up the matter of Ms. Riseborough’s nomination during a previously scheduled meeting on Tuesday. Among the issues will be whether the campaign violated any academy rules and, if so, what the repercussions should be.At issue seems to be the efforts by the actress Mary McCormack, who is married to Mr. Morris, and her manager, Jason Weinberg, who also represents Ms. Riseborough, to get her friends and acquaintances in the entertainment industry to watch the film and talk about it. Neither Ms. McCormack nor Mr. Morris is a member of the academy, though many of the actors who praised Ms. Riseborough’s performance are.Howard Stern, Ms. McCormack’s co-star in the 1997 film “Private Parts,” praised “To Leslie” on his satellite radio show, and the veteran actress Frances Fisher repeatedly posted about it on Instagram, writing on Jan. 14 that voters should select Ms. Riseborough since “Viola, Michelle, Danielle & Cate are a lock for their outstanding work.” Mentioning competitors or their films directly is verboten when campaigning. Voters are also not supposed to be courted directly, without the academy acting as a gatekeeper of sorts.The specter of rescinding Ms. Riseborough’s nomination has been raised, but one longtime academy member, who discussed internal matters on the condition of anonymity, considered that unlikely since she did not make the direct appeals to voters herself. An acting nomination has never been rescinded, though it has happened in other categories.Ms. Riseborough declined to comment. Mr. Weinberg did not respond to requests seeking comment from him and Ms. McCormack.The academy declined to comment for this article, but it released a statement that said, “We are conducting a review of the campaign procedures around this year’s nominees, to ensure that no guidelines were violated, and to inform us whether changes to the guidelines may be needed in a new era of social media and digital communication.”Oscars campaigning has been a blood sport for decades. The modern Machiavelli for the process was, after all, Harvey Weinstein, who became notorious for bludgeoning would-be voters with parties, screenings and not-so-subtle whisper campaigns.The process has become only more sophisticated. In 2019, for instance, Netflix rented two soundstages on a historic movie lot in Hollywood to push for “Roma.” The voters who attended “‘Roma’ Experience Day” received breakfast and lunch and there were hours of panel discussions with Alfonso Cuarón, the movie’s director, and his crew.But there are rules, many of them put into place after Oscar campaigning turned into an entire industry, employing scores of consultants and strategists and generating millions of dollars of revenue for the trade publications that accept “For Your Consideration” advertisements.Studios are permitted to send out only one email a week to Oscar voters, and they cannot send them directly. The emails must be routed through messaging services sanctioned by the academy. According to one awards consultant, who described the process on the condition of anonymity, each email blast can cost $2,000.Screenings are permitted, with “reasonable” food and drink. (The rule book doesn’t spell out the definition of “reasonable.”) Everything must be provided in the same location where the movie was shown. Lavish dinners across the street or across town are not allowed.As for individual lobbying, the academy includes only a one-line explanation of what is forbidden: “Contacting academy members directly and in a manner outside of the scope of these rules to promote a film or achievement for Academy Award consideration is expressly forbidden.”In 2010, Nicolas Chartier, a producer of “The Hurt Locker,” was barred from attending the Academy Awards after he sent emails to voters urging them to vote for his film and not “Avatar.” In 2014, the composer Bruce Broughton contacted members directly, asking them to vote for his song from the unheralded film “Alone Yet Not Alone.” He received a nomination, but the academy rescinded it. In 2017, a sound mixing nomination for Greg P. Russell (“13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi”) was rescinded for a similar reason. In each case, the academy declined to add a fifth nominee.Ric Robertson, the academy’s former chief operating officer and a member for 24 years, said a failure to address the issues of personally lobbying voters could lead to more concerted campaigns.“This campaign sounds like it was organic,” Mr. Robertson, who was involved in putting many of the campaigning rules into effect, said of Ms. Riseborough’s situation. “It came about because a couple of prominent people really liked the film and the performance and used their connections to promote it. Well, it could get a lot more organized next year and institutionalized at other companies.”Though “To Leslie” was unknown to many voters before numerous stars began praising it, Ms. Riseborough is a respected British actress with a chameleonic flair. She has spent the past two decades playing complicated women in mostly independent films. She has worked for directors as varied as Alejandro G. Iñárritu (“Birdman”), Tom Ford (“Nocturnal Animals”) and Mike Leigh (“Happy-Go-Lucky”). Mr. Morris previously directed her in the Netflix series “Bloodline.”And since the questions about Ms. Riseborough’s campaign have arisen, there has been a backlash to the backlash. The “unabashed solicitation of Oscar votes,” The Hollywood Reporter’s Scott Feinberg said, “is a tradition almost as old as the academy itself.”For the Oscars, this is the latest in a string of controversies in recent years. Some were self-inflicted, like the two consecutive years the organization nominated only white actors, which spawned the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite and led the academy to begin overhauling and diversifying its membership. The exclusion of Ms. Davis and Ms. Deadwyler, and Ms. Chukwu’s comments after the nominations, show that the issue remains a raw one.Last year, as the Oscars were trying to recover from the pandemic, Will Smith shocked a global audience by slapping Chris Rock onstage during the telecast. Shortly after, Mr. Smith returned to the stage to accept the best actor trophy. The academy subsequently barred him from Oscar-related events, included the ceremony, for the next decade.As for “To Leslie,” which barely had the funds to pay the $20,000 fee to submit it to the academy’s portal so members could watch it, all of the attention has seemed to help, a little.Momentum Pictures, its distributor, returned the film to six theaters this past weekend, betting that Ms. Riseborough’s nomination would intrigue audiences. According to The Hollywood Reporter, it grossed around $250,000. More

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      Which Sundance Movies Could Follow ‘CODA’ to the Oscars?

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      Jonathan Majors in “Magazine Dreams” and Teyana Taylor in “A Thousand and One,” among others, could make the journey from Park City to the Dolby Theater.Over the past few decades, the Sundance Film Festival has premiered Oscar winners like “Manchester by the Sea,” “Call Me by Your Name” and “Minari,” but it wasn’t until last March — when the crowd-pleasing “CODA” won best picture — that a Sundance movie went the distance and claimed the top Academy Award.It may be a little while before Sundance pulls off that feat again, as the Oscar nominations announced last week featured no movies from the festival in the best-picture race; indeed, the only 2022 Sundance film to make a dent in the top six Oscar categories was the British drama “Living,” which earned a best-actor nod for Bill Nighy. But could the movies that just premiered at the 2023 edition of the festival, which concluded on Sunday, help recover some of Sundance’s award-season mojo?The program certainly offered a fair amount of best-actor contenders who could follow in Nighy’s footsteps. Foremost among them is Jonathan Majors. The up-and-coming actor already has a crowded 2023: He’ll soon be seen facing off against Michael B. Jordan in “Creed III” and playing the supervillain Kang in Marvel properties like “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” and “Loki.” And that slate just got even stronger with the Sundance premiere of “Magazine Dreams,” a troubled-loner drama in which Majors plays an amateur bodybuilder on the brink of snapping. Had the film been released a few months ago, Majors would have made this year’s thin best-actor lineup for sure, but the right studio buyer could take advantage of his newfound Marvel momentum to muscle this formidable performance into the next race.The Projectionist Chronicles the Awards SeasonThe Oscars aren’t until March, but the campaigns have begun. Kyle Buchanan is covering the films, personalities and events along the way.Meet the Newer, Bolder Michelle Williams: Why she made the surprising choice to skip the supporting actress category and run for best actress.Best-Actress Battle Royal: A banner crop of leading ladies like Michelle Yeoh and Cate Blanchett rule the Oscars’ deepest and most dynamic race.‘Glass Onion’ and Rian Johnson: The director explains why he sold the “Knives Out” franchise to Netflix, and how he feels about its theatrical test.A Supporting-Actress Underdog: In “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” don’t discount the pivotal presence of Stephanie Hsu.Other best-actor candidates that could come from the current Sundance crop include Gael Garcia Bernal, who could earn his first nomination for playing a gay luchador in the appealing “Cassandro,” and David Strathairn, who toplines the modest, humane “A Little Prayer,” about a father deciding whether to meddle in his son’s extramarital affair. One point in Strathairn’s favor is that his film will be released by Sony Pictures Classics, which has managed to land a well-liked veteran in the best-actor lineup three of the last four years (Nighy for “Living,” Anthony Hopkins for “The Father” and Antonio Banderas for “Pain and Glory”).The top Sundance jury prize went to A.V. Rockwell’s “A Thousand and One,” which could earn best-actress attention for Teyana Taylor, who plays a defiant ex-con resorting to desperate measures to keep custody of her son. (Still, the film’s planned March release from Focus Features will require some end-of-year reminders for forgetful voters.) Also buzzed about was Greta Lee, who could be in contention for A24’s “Past Lives,” about a Korean American woman reunited with her former lover; the film was so rapturously received that a best-picture push could be in the cards.Will any of the year’s biggest-selling films crash the Oscars race? Netflix spent $20 million to acquire the well-reviewed “Fair Play,” which pits the “Bridgerton” star Phoebe Dynevor against the “Solo: A Star Wars Story” actor Alden Ehrenreich as co-workers whose affair curdles once she gets promoted. It’s not the kind of starry auteur project that usually gets a big end-of-the-year campaign from Netflix, but if this battle of the sexes becomes a zeitgeisty hit, the streamer may give it a shot. Apple TV+ paid $20 million for the musical comedy “Flora and Son,” from the “Once” director John Carney, while Searchlight shelled out more than $7 million for the Ben Platt vehicle “Theater Camp.” At the very least, these two comedies feature delightful original-song contenders.Sundance films could make the biggest splash is in the best-documentary race: All but one of this year’s Oscar-nominated documentaries first debuted at the January festival, and even if you stripped Sundance of its star-driven narrative films, the strength of its docs would still preserve its status as a top-tier world festival.This year, the most-talked-about docs were the award winners “Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project,” about a storied Black poet; the Alzheimer’s drama “The Eternal Memory”; “Beyond Utopia,” which features compelling hidden-camera footage of North Koreans trying to defect; and “20 Days in Mariupol,” about the Russian siege of a Ukrainian port city. More

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      ‘RRR’ Picks Up Oscar Nomination for Best Song

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      Pop quiz: What are the three R’s?They aren’t reduce, reuse, recycle — this awards season, one of the hottest topics of conversation has quickly become the Telugu-language Indian action spectacular “RRR,” or “Rise, Roar, Revolt,” which picked up an Oscar nomination for best song on Tuesday.The movie, which stars two of India’s most popular actors — Ram Charan and N.T. Rama Rao Jr. — is set in Delhi during the early 1920s and follows two patriotic but philosophically opposed men who team up to rescue a kidnapped girl (Twinkle Sharma) from British colonial officials (Alison Doody and Ray Stevenson).The film was already a worldwide box office success when it was released in March — it was directed by one of India’s most successful filmmakers, S.S. Rajamouli, with a whopping $72 million budget — and grossed $65 million during its opening weekend.But now, it has become the rare Indian hit to catch on with American viewers outside the Indian diaspora, thanks to word-of-mouth social media buzz and an unusual theatrical rerelease strategy.After the film, originally distributed by Sarigama Cinemas, initially played at 1,200 screens across the country in March — and began streaming on Netflix in late May — Dylan Marchetti, the president of the distributor Variance Films, saw its potential crossover appeal when he watched it repeatedly with enthusiastic audiences.So Variance got in touch with Sarigama, and they took the rare step of relaunching the film — sold to moviegoers as an “encoRRRe” — which led to its breakthrough in the United States.Speaking to The Times in August, Cristina Cacioppo, who programmed “RRR” at the Nitehawk Prospect Park in Brooklyn, said it drew moviegoers in the 20-to-30 age range, most from outside the Indian diaspora.“There was an overall wave of joy throughout,” Cacioppo told The Times. “You could feel the room smiling, the jaws dropping.” (More than three hours of Charan and Rao wrestling tigers; pulling off a daring bridge rescue involving a motorcycle, a horse and a flaming train car; and schooling British partygoers as they dance in perfect synchronization in matching suspenders will do that.)Josh Hurtado, a consultant at the independently run Potentate Films who collaborated with Sarigama and Marchetti on a one-night-only theatrical revival of “RRR” in June, told The Times that many attendees praised the film for the same reasons that had previously discouraged them from watching new Indian movies: “long run times, song and dance numbers, and ridiculous action” he said. “People come out saying they wish that this three-hour movie were longer.”The film also gained a robust afterlife on TikTok, with its earwormy syncopated dance number “Naatu Naatu” (Telugu for “Native Native”), becoming a viral hit thanks to Charan and Rama Rao’s playful syncopated dance moves and infectious singing. (The lyrics are by Chandrabose, while M.M. Keeravani composed the music.)After winning a Golden Globe for best original song earlier this month, as well as a Critics Choice Award for best foreign language film and a New York Film Critics Circle award for best director for Rajamouli, the film has its sights squarely trained on the big one: a best song Oscar for Charan and NTR Jr.’s joyous extravaganza of shoulder rolls, arm pumps and hook steps. More