The Film Experience

by Abe Fried-Tanzer

The Favourite is making a big splash this awards season – there’s no question of that. Olivia Colman, Emma Stone, and Rachel Weisz are looking good for Oscar nominations, even if the classification of the latter two in the supporting race continues to infuriate Nathaniel every time a new organization announces. Its screenplay is a shoo-in, director Yorgos Lanthimos has a good shot, and the film will also be cited in a few technical categories.

There’s one great element of the film – aside from its makeup and hairstyling, which failed to make the finals -- that likely won’t be on the Oscar list. Though the film is dominated by women, one male actor makes quite an impression...

If you've seen the movie, you've likely loved Nicholas Hoult’s sly charismatic performance, but that probably won’t be enough to propel him to a nomination.

Hoult portrays Robert Harley, the 1st Earl of Oxford, a conniving politician whose schemes do indeed rival those of Weisz’s Lady Sarah and Stone’s ambitious Abigail. Robert is motivated most by his own interests, and is visibly ruffled when Colman’s Queen Anne dismisses his policy suggestions. Harley embraces the costuming of the era, dressing his finest whenever he comes to the palace.

Hoult shines most in scenes opposite Emma Stone, using the power that Robert has to force Abigail to partner with him as a spy before she realizes that she’s capable of just as much duplicity as he is. He’s easily the most visible male in the cast, with the ubiquitous Joe Alwyn as Samuel Masham, Abigail’s suitor, running second.

Hoult, who is now 29, has been a cinematic presence for over 20 years, earning his first credit at the age of seven for Intimate Relations (1996) starring Julie Walters and Rupert Graves. After that he made a splash as a child star with his endearing turn as the titular character in About a Boy (2002), in which he famously sang "Killing Me Softly". After starring on the British show Skins in 2007, Hoult made the leap to major movies right along with his growth spurt.

Hoult has racked up lots of credits, since. Among Hoult’s most prominent roles are the admiring student in A Single Man, his obsessive suicidal soldier "Nux" in Mad Max: Fury Road, Henry “The Beast” McCoy in the newest X-Men movies, and J.D. Salinger in Rebel in the Rye. His turn as a mysterious suitor with a secret in Young Ones and his unexpectedly light and entertaining star turn as the undead protagonist in Warm Bodies are my two personal favorite roles, prior to his very winning comic portrayal of Harley.

Early conversation suggested that Hoult might have been a contender, though the traction he needed would have looked something like the path to nominations for the likes of Tom Hardy in The Revenant. With a Best Supporting Actor lineup that seems pretty set, could Hoult prove an unexpected and welcome alternative to someone like Timothée Chalamet, whose film has no support outside of his performance? There’s always a chance, even if it’s nowhere near as strong as it would be if Harley himself knew the right Academy members to bribe and blackmail.