That Riseborough Woman!
Her controversial nomination and why, I imagine, the Academy won’t rescind it.
The other day, I was hunched over in a public lavatory (oh, shut up!) watching the nominations…
I was browned off that Sally’s fantasy boyfriend got in – for his third riff on Connell Waldron – when the shocker came. I went hotfoot to Google to retrieve an image of Jeff Goldblum: “You did it, you crazy son of a bitch. You did it”. And she had. Andrea Riseborough is now an Oscar nominee.
Before that moment, I couldn’t recall a Best Actress year as insipid. Perhaps 2015 when Greed Larson won. Room, like Inertia’s Brooklyn, was supposedly an Irish film – but removed enough to not feel threatened by its success. Rooney Mara was in the wrong category and Charlotte Rampling, amidst the #OscarsSoWhite drama, torpedoed her chances with “perhaps black actors didn’t deserve to be there”. On Tuesday, the hashtag was resurrected. Danielle Deadwyler and Viola Davis were missing.
I was dumbstruck. I’d read comparisons to Andra Day and Cynthia Erivo, but I was truly besotted by Ms. Deadwyler and Till. A superb performance in a worthy film. (Unlike Ms. Day, good in a bad one, and Ms. Erivo who, with all due respect, stunk in a vehicle that should have never gotten near awards consideration. As I’m fond of saying: Vladimir Putin could play Harriet Tubman or Marilyn Monroe and would get in on name recognition.) I was rather hoping Till cracked Best Picture!
We all know what happened – but it’s not Andrea Riseborough’s fault. If Ms. Deadwyler pushed out Michelle Williams or Ana de Armas, the forty-one-year-old Britisher would be the Feel Good story of the year. Davina and Goliath! After all, few were incensed by the inclusion of Blonde which swept the Golden Raspberries. Ms. de Armas dodged “Worst Actress”, mind. In 2021, the Snooty Twitter Gays forwent Rogaine, as anyone can join the Razzie organisation for a small fee, to vote for Glenn in Hillbilly Elegy – something they’d never have the gumption to do here.
Let’s face it, Ms. Riseborough is just obscure enough to be viewed as an upstart on the make. No one would have a problem with an established star – like Toni Collette in Hereditary, Rosamund Pike in I Care a Lot or Lupita Nyong’o in Us, all of whom could have used a last minute push. I watched To Leslie, last night, and while it is an arresting turn (a pal likened it to Four Good Gays with Mila Kunis and our Ms. Close), it’s hardly an undeniable one. I felt Ms. Riseborough failed to capture the essence of Leslie Jorda– no. But come on! Her campaign was a swizz to draw attention to this tiny indie. Surely not a single soul, even Andrea herself, expected the gambit to work?
The Academy is hellbent on rooting out the culprits. Frances Fisher, Ruth DeWitt Bukater in Titanic to you and I, has become the biggest fall guy since Lee Harvey Oswald! While everybody from Jane Fonda to Goopy Paltrow lauded Leslie, Ms. Fisher broke an Academy rule by naming names – as did Mary McCormack, the actress-wife of its director.
“Viola, Michelle, Danielle & Cate are a lock for their outstanding work!” Fisher trilled on Instagram, laying out a path for Andrea’s nomination. She would need one-sixth of all first preference votes from the Actors’ Branch. 218 people. McCormack similarly pulled every string, haranguing her colleagues for weeks. “If you’re willing to post every day between now and Jan 17th, that would be amazing!” The guerrilla attack was on.
In an email yesterday, the Academy announced procedures will be reviewed in light of “the new era of social media”. The larger world, meanwhile, is framing it as culture war. A white performer availing of a network of well-connected friends while women of colour do everything that’s expected but still come up short. It’s true: with the endless parade of schmoozing, Ms. Deadwyler and Ms. Davis pounded the pavement since September. My heart goes out to Viola – all jokes aside, no one respects how hard-won these victories are like her.
As a much-shared tweet had it, What If the Academy decided to replace Riseborough with the sixth place finisher – and it turned out to be Othiefia Stoleman in Empire of Light? Awards anoraks foamed that even if the nod was rescinded, the Best Actress category would be capped at four. This happened as recently as 2014 when Alone Yet Not Alone, a song from a faith film of the same name, was deemed ineligible. Its author, a former Academy governor, lobbied for its inclusion using official contacts. You may also remember the case of Nicolas Chartier, The Hurt Locker producer banned from the ceremony for trashing Avatar.
Will such a fate befall Ms. Riseborough? I shouldn’t think so. But perhaps Frances and her accomplice get a slap on the wrist. The system’s to blame, not the individual! What next? The Academy investigating Diane Warren who’s nominated annually for movies no one’s heard of? Or the president herself, Janet Yang, for her endorsement of Michelle Yeoh when voting opened? There’s snickers about Jamie Lee Curtis, too, who was just short of traipsing down Sunset Boulevard with a cowbell around her neck to get her nod.
Oh, I dislike beloved actresses becoming punchlines – in 2019, Our Number One Lady never said anything more inflammatory than a potential win for The Wife meaning “an awful lot”. This translated to thirst of the most entitled kind and she needed to be taken down a peg or two. “It’s about the performance!” Twitter moans, although this saga proves it very clearly isn’t. People are in for a rude awakening about how the world works.
For now, Andrea Riseborough’s “nominated for 1 Oscar” on IMDb comes with an asterisk.