Kathy Bates going lead for Richard Jewell!
Sunday, November 24, 2019 at 11:32AM 
Shortly after updating the Best Supporting Actress chart and placing Kathy Bates in the mix for Richard Jewell, one of our SAG Nominating Committee friends sent us this image. SURPRISE. Kathy Bates is campaigning as a lead at SAG.
Longtime awards obsessives will already know this but for newbies to the intricacies of awards season you should know that SAG voters do not have a choice where they place actors. They can only vote on them in the categories for which they've officially been submitted by the studios (same with Emmy voters). Occassionally SAG and Oscar campaign tactics are different, studios changed their mind, or errors are made by administrative types so people nominated in lead at SAG occassionally go on to win supporting acting Oscars (Benicio del Toro in Traffic / Jennifer Connelly in A Beautiful Mind) or go from being a supporting nominee at SAG to a leading player with Oscar (Keisha Castle-Hughes in Whale Rider / Kate Winslet in The Reader).
How will this all shake out?
Reader Comments (28)
Funnily enough I was earlier today rewatching her lose the 2002 supporting actress Oscar. She looked somewhat confused and I don’t blame her. It really was inconsiderate of Sean Connery to announce the winner as simply “Catherine” when a “Kathy” was nominated too.
Interesting. Just got my SAG magazine and the FYC ad for Richard Jewell lists her as Supporting. One or the other got it wrong.
This is terrible for her. She loses momentum being in the wrong category. Also, the Richard Jewell FYC site has her in supporting.
Robuk
Well her name is kathleen not catherine so I don’t understand her confusion!
By the way , while I haven’t seen Richard jewell I love the idea of kathy bates being back in the game.
David Poland has a good column about the Lead Actress race in response to that Mark Harris Vanity Fair piece. He makes a pretty good case that Zee/Theron/Johannson/Ronan will be hard to knock out of the top four spots. It feels like Bates would have trouble grabbing the fifth slot because the movie is such a late arrival, but we'll see. Supporting Actress feels more fluid.
It says Ana de Armas is also going lead for Knives Out. How big is her role? Is this a tactic to avoid competition from the other ladies in her movie or is she a legit lead?
Tom G -- it's a large role. While it's a true ensemble film but she has the most screen time of any of the characters.
Suzanne (Real): Zellweger, Theron and Ronan ARE solid. I'd actually lean on ScarJo NOT being solid (for Oscar, she's solid for Globe) and we won't REALLY know where she is until the SAG noms. Until the SAG noms, I generally assume we're dealing with Advantage Double Indie.
1. Renee Zellweger, Judy (Mus/Com Globe)
2. Charlize Theron, Bombshell (Mus/Com Globe)
3. Saoirse Ronan, Little Women (Drama Globe)
4. Awkwafina, The Farewell (Split Decision)
5. Alfre Woodard, Clemency (Drama Globe)
6. Elisabeth Moss, Her Smell (Mus/Com Globe)
7. Scarlett Johansson, Marriage Story (Split Decision)
8. Lupita Nyong'o, Us (Drama Globe)
9. Mary Kay Place, Diane (Drama Globe)
10. Cynthia Erivo, Harriet (Fairly strong week one, but it kinda deflated and died. Her only advantage at this point is this being explicitly a biography. Think Idris' Mandela Movie. Globe nod, sure, maybe, but that seems like all it'll do.) (Drama Globe)
I didn't think Richard Jewell was coming for anything. Eastwood being Eastwood and we'd all move on from it. I pray this film doesnt "American Sniper" it's way into the conversation.
I hope Jillian Bell can at least get a Globe nom. She was great in BRAM
Scarlett will be nominated, 100%. She's young but could have and should have been nominated as a teenager, but is still nomination free.
She is getting in.
Eastwood being Eastwood means he's doing something interesting and Oscars sometimes take notice. Surprising as hell to see her go lead.
Volvagia - In that Poland piece I mentioned, he said that Clemency has screened once this season in LA. It would be incredible to see Woodard win the Oscar, but Neon is putting their chips behind Parasite this season. It seems like I heard about events for Marriage Story, Little Women, and Bombshell every day (Judy has died down a bit), whereas I only hear about Clemency because Murtada had the opportunity to see it at Sundance and really loved it.
(To be fair, it got Indie Spirit and Gotham nods, too. But it has been really low profile otherwise.)
For the record (I know this because my wife was on the SAG Nominating Committee that year), the same thing happened to Meryl Streep's Adaptation performance in 2002 -- it was listed as lead on the SAG ballot despite the fact she was campaigned/slotted in support everywhere else (and was listed as lead for The Hours that same year). I don't know where SAG got the idea or who made the decision.
Anyway, the upshot was, Steep got no nomination at all from SAG that year, but still won the Globe in support and was Oscar-nominated in that category. So it doesn't seem like SAG was more than a tiny glitch. Though, that was when we had the longer Oscar season. With early deadlines (even earlier this year), things lock in sooner, and it's possible this will have more impact.
Tom Q-
Is your wife still on the committee?
Suzanne: No, they rotate the membership of the nominating committee every year. I think there are only a few hundred people who do the nominating, out of something like 50,000 members (maybe more, after the merger with AFTRA).
I think it is good news for Johansson and Zhao, who I felt could be shaking with Bates entering the BSActress race. This will make her lose momentum like @/3rdtiful said. I think the movie won't be a critics darling coming critics awards season (I can be wrong of course) and I'm predicting her to miss the Globe, so I think she was really in need of a SAG nod.
And I guess Rebecca Ferguson is going supporting for Doctor Sleep. Is there any way that the SAG nomcom friend can send the full Female Actor in a Leading Role ballot to see who all was ultimately submitted in what seems like a relatively limited field?
Tom Q: I believe you are talking about Streep in the Hours that year.. who was submitted in the wrong category, thereby allowing Salma Hayek to get in for Frida (and ultimately get the Oscar nom over Streep)
The only thing that matter to me in that photo is seeing Ana de Armas placement.
Pitty they are not campaining hard for that sag ensemble nomination...
Paranoid Android: As I said, she was listed on the SAG ballot as lead for both The Hours and Adaptation. It's very possible the fact that she had two performances in the same category divided Streep supporters enough to keep her from scoring a nomination for either. And, yes, I'd agree Salma Hayek was probably the beneficiary, as the other four all had stronger credentials.
Technically, this didn't affect the Oscars, as the Adaptation performance got its due in support there. Streep's work in The Hours failed to get a nomination on its own terms (without vote dividing). But, of course, being omitted from SAG may have prepared the way for that omission.
That Streep snafu was a big deal. I was over at GoldDerby then and the studio had to release a statement. Michelle Pfeiffer in White Oleander benefited from the mistake.
Eastwood being Eastwood isn't always interesting. It's also "The Mule", "The 15:17 to Paris", "Gran Torino" and "Jersey Boys".
Re: Eastwood post. - and, contender for the biggest mismatch in cinema annals of Director and Subject Matter - :Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil"!
*Sheds tear*
Oh no baby, what is you doin?
Twitter has ruined two things: politics and the Oscars.
@Andy: Politics was most certainly ruined before Twitter. I'd argue the Oscars were too.
Co-sign as excited to see Ana de Armas listed in lead, sorta surprising despite being where she belongs. Gets into the spoiler zone to discuss too much, but ohhh would be sweet if she got in.