In the last Best Actress predictions piece, I said the race “may become clearer over the next month.” Whoops. If anything, the battle for the Best Actress Oscar has only become more confusing as awards season has barreled along. We will head into the ceremony without a genuine frontrunner in an acting category for the first time in years. There’s something genuinely thrilling about that, but it does make life difficult for us prognosticators.
So where do we stand? In a move no one saw coming, the four major televised awards went to four different actresses. Carey Mulligan won the Critics Choice Award. Andra Day won the Golden Globe. Viola Davis won the SAG Award. And Frances McDormand won the BAFTA. That truly means any of these four could win the Oscar. No offence intended to the magnificent Vanessa Kirby, but her only win this season has been at the Venice Film Festival back in September, so she’s the outsider in this race.
But which one of those awards will correlate with the Academy’s choice is anyone’s guess. You can pull all sorts of statistics out in an attempt to justify your final prediction, but each nominee has some negative against them to disqualify that particular stat. The winner of the Golden Globe for Best Actress in either category has gone on to collect the Oscar 18 times in the last 20 years, so that would appear to bode well for Day. But her nomination snubs at both the SAG Awards and the BAFTAs are hard to overlook. As is the fact she’s the sole nomination for The United States vs. Billie Holiday. Is that Globe victory back in late February too much of a distant memory to play a factor this year?
Then there’s Frances McDormand, who is looking for her third win for Best Actress. Nomadland lives or dies on the strength of McDormand’s performance, so the fact she effortlessly shoulders that burden would normally be enough to see her sail to victory. Her BAFTA win wasn’t all that surprising, given Day, Mulligan, and Davis were strangely snubbed of nominations. However, it did arrive just before final Oscar voting commenced. That kind of publicity could do wonders for her chances, especially given McDormand has been noticeably absent at all virtual ceremonies this year, suggesting she has no interest in playing the campaign game. But the fact McDormand is one of the film’s producers and will receive an Oscar should it win Best Picture may cause voters to shy away from awarding her with two prizes on the same night, particularly given McDormand’s Best Actress win for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri in 2017 feels far too recent for her to win again.
The most “buzzed” about performance this season has undoubtedly been Carey Mulligan in Promising Young Woman. It’s a film that peaked at just the right time and waltzed away with five nominations including Best Picture and Best Director for Emerald Fennell, who seems highly likely to take home Best Original Screenplay. Mulligan scored over 20 wins from the critics groups and just added a win at the Film Independent Spirit Awards to match her earlier victory at Critics Choice. But the fact Mulligan couldn’t nab a win anywhere else this season is hugely troubling. If she had managed one additional win, she’d be the clear frontrunner. Alas, it wasn’t to be.
That leaves us with Queen Viola Davis, whose victory at the SAG Awards may be the most telling of all. The acting branch is the largest of the Academy, so a win at SAG in the latter stages of the season has pushed Davis slightly ahead in this race. It’s still far from a certainty, namely due to the fact Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom was snubbed of a Best Picture nomination. Why is this an issue? Well, assuming Chadwick Boseman takes Best Actor, a Davis win in Best Actress would be the first time two leads from the same film have won from a movie without a Best Picture nomination. But do voters really know and/or care about such a stat? Probably not, to be honest. The strength of Davis’ performance coupled with the fact she’s one of the most adored and respected actresses in the game may just give her the edge here.
If you happen to be correct with your Best Actress prediction this year, it’s mostly on luck and little else. There’s no cause for “I told you so” to be said when the winner is announced. There is a solid case to be made for four of the nominees and any winner besides Kirby won’t truly be a shock. All five actresses genuinely deserve to win, so we should take comfort in the fact the Academy can’t make a bad choice here. While I think it’s ultimately a battle between Mulligan and Davis, I’m sticking with the latter. A win for Mulligan would be stupendous and it could absolutely happen. But Davis is the most nominated Black actress in Oscars history and will become only the second Black actress to win this category. Regardless of who wins, it will be cause for celebration.
BEST ACTRESS FINAL PREDICTION:
1. Viola Davis – Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (Netflix)
2. Carey Mulligan – Promising Young Woman (Focus Features)
3. Andra Day – The United States vs. Billie Holiday (Hulu)
4. Frances McDormand – Nomadland (Searchlight Pictures)
5. Vanessa Kirby – Pieces of a Woman (Netflix)
Will win: Viola Davis
Should win: Carey Mulligan
Possible shocker: Vanessa Kirby