Oscars Spotlight: Actress in a Supporting Role
Ariana DeBose seems to have this on lock, but who would her competition be?
We’re a little more than a week out from the Oscars, and I can’t get enough Oscar predictions talk at this point. Counting down to the ceremony, I’m hoping to post my take on some major categories. I’ll start with a fairly safe bet, Best Supporting Actress.
The Nominees:
Jessie Buckley in THE LOST DAUGHTER
Ariana DeBose in WEST SIDE STORY
Judi Dench in BELFAST
Kirsten Dunst in THE POWER OF THE DOG
Aunjanue Ellis in KING RICHARD
Image Credit: Indiewire, Deadline, Entertainment Weekly, Empire Magazine
Who Will Win: Ariana DeBose
Who Should Win: Ariana DeBose (with Aunjanue Ellis as a close runner-up)
The word I keep hearing Oscar pundits use to describe presumed winner Ariana DeBose is “steamrolling.” She’s won every major precursor award, including BAFTA (the British Oscars) and SAG (the actor’s guild), and she has accepted each one with grace and charm in a way that has only continued to build momentum. Her performance in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story is the total Oscar package: she’s a powerhouse singer and dancer, she’s bursting with personality as Anita, she has excellent comedic timing, and — most of all — she delivers on those classic Oscar reel tears.
DeBose deserves all the praise she’s getting, and I fully support her win here. I thought her portrayal of Anita captured the essence of the character: an independent, enterprising, tough yet vulnerable woman caught between two worlds. The way she delivers one of her final lines: “Yo no soy americana. Soy puertorriqueña” emotionally punctuates the film even more than the tragic love story. The rollicking, hopeful outlook she has in the huge song and dance number, “America,” has clearly been crushed by violence and loss, hardening her in a way that makes her want to declare allegiance to Puerto Rico. Tony Kushner’s screenplay adapts the Broadway musical in a way that modernizes the story, placing the immigrant experience at its center; I don’t think he and Spielberg could have pulled that off without DeBose’s performance.
Image Credit: Deadline
There isn’t a strong contender for an upset in this category at all. Most critics scratched their heads when Judi Dench garnered a nomination. She’s great in Belfast (I mean, she’s Dame Judi Dench, after all), but her part is very small, and the performance fades into the background next to other roles she’s been nominated for in the past. With the Oscar she won for Shakespeare in Love (1998) on her shelf already, I don’t think any voters will be clamoring to give her a second statue for playing Kenneth Branagh’s grandmother. Jessie Buckley is similarly great in The Lost Daughter, but she’s playing a younger version of Olivia Coleman in flashbacks, so I can see how a lot of voters might chalk her performance up to a shadow of Coleman’s performance, not meriting its own recognition.
If The Power of the Dog has a big night, taking Best Picture and a lot of other awards, then I can see Kirsten Dunst mayyyyybe getting swept up in that success. But with murmurings about how much everyone loves CODA, which has had a couple surprise wins this season and has been campaigning hard, I don’t think that’s likely. (More on The Power of the Dog vs. CODA next week, after we know which one wins the Producer’s Guild Awards this weekend.) I thought Dunst was excellent in The Power of the Dog, but she is nervous and distressed for most of the film; her character’s role in the story precludes her from showing the range that DeBose does.
If I were to pick an out of left field spoiler, it would be Aunjenue Ellis, who plays Oracene Williams in King Richard. In terms of who I would personally vote for, I would put Ellis right up there with Ariana DeBose. She is a force of nature, showing the audience that Oracene should take just as much credit for Venus and Serena’s all-star careers. It’s unclear if we’ll get clips for each of the nominees this year, but if we do, I hope the Academy shows her big “kitchen scene,” in which she confronts Will Smith’s Richard Williams. Like DeBose, Ellis’ film hinges on the strength of her performance because her counterpoints to Smith’s Williams fleshes out that character and makes him a more complex figure. Will Smith has very wisely thanked Ellis every time he has won a previous award. It’s possible that his sincere and consistent acknowledgment of her may benefit her as much as it does him.
All that said, you’d be crazy not to predict Ariana DeBose in your Oscar pool. She’s pretty much got this.