by Nathaniel R
Riz Ahmed was one of handful of stars hat operated as inadvertent hosts by having bits of an interview spliced in all throughout the show about their careers and such.
We watched the SAG awards last night with a mix of fascination and relief. Fascination at the winners chosen and relief that the ceremony accepted that it couldn't be a normal one and therefore became merely a swift presentation of wins with acceptance speeches on Zoom. Aside from swift "bits" where famous actors talked about their headshots or the "special skills" on their resumes, it was all just actors talking about the nominated actors and then the winners beaming from their homes on Zoom. It ran just a single hour long...
THE FILM WINNERS
Trial of the Chicago 7 wins Outstanding Cast. This is Eddie Redmayne's 2nd SAG award and Michael Keaton's 3rd.
Cast Trial of the Chicago 7
Actress Viola Davis, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (6th SAG win)
Actor Chadwick Boseman, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2nd SAG win)
Supporting Actress Youn Yuh-Jung, Minari
Supporting Actor Daniel Kaluuya, Judas and the Black Messiah (2nd SAG win)
Stunt Ensemble Wonder Woman 1984
HISTORICAL TIDBITS FIRST:
• This is the first time in SAG's 27 year history when all four single performance film awards have gone to actors of color.
• This is only the second time in SAG's 27 year history when an entirely non-English language performance (Youn Yuh-Jung) has won one of the four individual performance awards and the first time it's happened for a woman. The only other time it happened was Roberto Benigni for his Italian performance in Life is Beautiful (1998). Sidebar note: Christoph Waltz also won for Inglourious Basterds (2009) but he spoke several languages in that film including a good deal of English.
• This is the fourth consecutive year in which a superhero film has won stunt ensemble, a trend that started with Wonder Woman (2017). Before that you'd have to go all the way back to The Dark Knight (2008) to find a superhero film winning.
• Michael Keaton is now the record holder for most wins for "Outstanding Cast in a Motion Picture" with his third win in the category for Chicago 7. He previously shared this win with coworkers for Birdman (2014) and Spotlight (2015)
• WEIRD NOTE FOR OBSESSIVE AWARDS NERDS ONLY: Each year we complain about SAG's rules of who gets left off the "Cast" list (the rule being you have to have your own title card to be nominated in this category). Somewhere between the nominations and the awards, Kelvin Harrison Jr was added to the "official" nomination so now he is a SAG winner. We're not sure how this happened -- and you'll see his IMDb page still does not (at this writing) reflect that he was added as an official nominee since he wasn't an official nominee when SAG first announced. But now he is a winner. Something must have happened bheind the scenes as he is the only one of those 11 actors who shared a title card who is now an official winner and he wasn't even the first billed among those 11.
ABOUT THIS YEAR'S WINS
Some of the wins were expected: Chadwick Boseman and Daniel Kaluuya are sweepers this season for their Leading performances in the Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor categories. Other wins were not entirely expected but easy to see coming like Trial of the Chicago 7 for Outstanding Cast. I had predicted it right here but as I felt it was the least deserving of the five contenders, I dreaded being right. In the end it felt too much like what SAG goes for in "Outstanding Cast" for them to pass up. Namely lots and lots of famous actors assembled for a well liked movie. The frustration is that a collection of names should not be the whole story with this prize. There seems to be little actual consideration as to the quality of the work overall. In our estimation Chicago 7 is very competently acted (barring a couple of broad off notes) but overall 'competence' shouldn't win you awards. Not when you're up against casts all operating on a very high level with no weak links (One Night in Miami, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom) or casts where the best performers are just transcendent (Minari, Da 5 Bloods). But bygones. SAG is now behind us and the wins are the wins.
What does it all mean for Oscar?
We knew that there was suspense in the female acting categories but THIS MUCH suspense? That we did not anticipate. Neither Viola Davis nor Youn Yuh-Jung were expected to win yet both won. It could be a simple blip in the season or they could be heading to Oscar wins. But it shows that both Lead Actress and Supporting Actress remain hyper competitive. It almost feels as if these are both 3 or 4 way races... rather than the even odds races they felt like between 2 or 3 competitors. We'll discuss Best Actress tomorrow as that definitely requires its own article.
Supporting Actress had previously felt like a contest between Glenn Close (the reigning queen of "overdue" status) and Maria Bakalova (the critical darling for what counts for a zeitgeist hit this year in the hardest year ever to judge what such a thing was). They both lost at the Globes where they were in different categories and now they've both lost at SAG where they were in the same category. Clearly neither of them are "way out front" as the perception had widely been during precursor season. SAG has no way to reward movies outside of acting categories so this win might be a case of wanting to reward Minari which was also up for cast and having no deep love for the other two movies. Oscar voters could reward Minari in other ways, of course, but it might be a simple case of a) Minari having momentum and b) voters actually watching Youn Yuh-Jung's tremendous work in the film. It's now a three way race for Oscar gold. How thrilling!
As for the cast win...
This might mean -- and we're dreading typing this -- that Trial of the Chicago 7 actually does have a shot at winning Best Picture after all. It's possible that Oscar voters will consider Best Director / Best Cinematography reward enough for Nomadland and it will lose the top prize. That would be heartbreaking (unless it lost to a movie on its level like, say, Minari or The Father) but Oscar history is full of heartbreaks. This recent tweet from filmmaker Rod Lurie, an Academy member, gave us pause.
In my gut I have this strong feeling that the winner of this year's best picture #Oscar will be a film without a directing nomination. An #Argo redux.
— Rod Lurie (@RodLurie) April 3, 2021
We doubt he's talking about The Father (sigh). He must be talking about Chicago 7. 'Argofuckyourself' takes on a whole new meaning in this context.
THE TELEVISION WINNERS
Cast, Comedy Schitt's Creek
Cast, Drama The Crown (2nd consecutive win)
Actress, Miniseries Anya Taylor-Joy, The Queens Gambit
Actor, Miniseries Mark Ruffalo, I Know This Much is True (3rd SAG win)
Actress, Drama Gillian Anderson, The Crown
Actor, Drama Jason Bateman, Ozark (2nd SAG win... both for this show)
Actress, Comedy Catherine O'Hara, Schitt's Creek
Actor, Comedy Jason Sudeikis, Ted Lasso
Stunt Ensemble The Mandalorian
When it comes to the television awards here's what we find most interesting about SAG. Like the Globes they operate (mostly) on a simple calendar year system but the Emmys operate on a summer-to-summer continuum. So the Globes and SAG can alternately be both behind Emmy favor (as in bidding farewell to Schitt's Creek) or ahead of Emmy favor, as in latching on to new series or miniseries that weren't eligible at the previous Emmys... in this case The Queen's Gambit and Ted Lasso. The latter two programs are heading towards the forthcoming Emmy season as frontrunners but there are still months worth of programming ahead that will also be eligible and could shift the narratives. New favourites could well emerge.
The frankly awesome cast of "Ted Lasso" got position of favor in the broadcast operating as the defacto "hosts" in a way since the ceremony had no host or opening monologue and no other throughline really
These swift SAG Awards night, on Easter Sunday of all days, gave Ted Lasso the intro and outro to the show. The scripted /acted bit directly addressed the concept of "Outstanding Cast" and the awards show themselves but did it in funny, in-character, and good sportmanship ways. It was quite the FYC for the show itself as it heads to its next awards race five months from now... or to be more precise, on September 19th, 2021 when the 73rd Primetime Emmy Awards will be held.