Vote on the new Smackdown. Meet your fellow panelists.

A new season of the Supporting Actress Smackdown is upon us. We'll begin with the current season, honoring the films of 2021.

• Buckley, The Lost Daughter
• DeBose, West Side Story
• Dench, Belfast
• Dunst Power of the Dog
• Ellis, King Richard

So email your votes ranking each nominated Supporting Actress performance on a scale of 1 (poor) to 5 (perfection) by this Sunday March 20th. Your votes will count toward the final outcome. Now, let's meet your fellow voters who we'll be chatting with you on the podcast.

REBECCA ALTER
Rebecca Alter is a Staff Writer at Vulture covering pop culture, ranging from awards season contenders to bad celebrity shenanigans. She thinks Malignant deserved more. [Twitter | Letterboxd]

Sophia Ciminello

Sophia is the co-founder and host of Oscar Wild, a podcast that covers this year’s awards season, Oscar retrospectives, and more. She has also appeared as a guest on Next Best Picture, And The Runner Up Is, and InSession Film. [Twitter | Instagram | OscarWild ]

Ryan McQuade
Ryan McQuade is a Latinx, film-obsessed writer located in San Antonio, Texas. Raised on musicals, westerns, and James Bond, his taste in cinema is extremely versatile. He.is the Executive Editor at AwardsWatch, where he reviews new films, interview various talent, and everything in-between. He also co-hosts three podcast: Extra Film, Chasing the Gold, and Busting the Block. [Twitter | Letterboxd]

CLAUDIO ALVES
Cláudio is a Portuguese film critic as well as a set and costume designer for the stage. He's worked in several small productions including a recent show inspired by Jeffrey Eugenides' The Virgin Suicides. Claudio also writes regularly for The Film Experience, Photogénie, and the Portuguese entertainment website Magazine.HD.  Formerly, he's written for the streaming service Filmin, the Portuguese blog for Sundance TV, and participated in the Young Critics' Workshop at Film Fest Ghent 2017. He's openly gay, a fashion history geek with a passion for cinema, and the proud owner of a feline angel by the name of Maggie The Cat. [Twitter | Letterboxd | Claudio's articles] 

HOSTED BY...

NATHANIEL ROGERS
Nathaniel is the creator and owner of The Film Experience. He is a member of The Critics Choice Association and the Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics and a longtime Oscar pundit here at TFE. His writing has also appeared at other publications including Vanity Fair, Vulture, Slate, Towleroad, Tribeca Film, and Winq.

If you are a working actor, a renowned critic, film historian, a novelist, a comedian, or an arts professional of some kind, chances are good that he has meant to invite you to a Smackdown panel, or would have if he happened to know you were obsessed with actresses. [Twitter | Contact | Instagram | Nathaniel's Articles] 

Comments

[Ramification1]

So hard to rank these, I love all of the five performances (yes, even Dench).

[Jésus Alonso]

I've yet to see "The Lost Daughter", so I can't judge Buckley's.

· DeBose ***** for becoming a force of nature, overcoming one of the most celebrated Oscar wins in the category, and then some. 2021's Anita is even more powerful and resonant than the "original" as portrayed by Rita Moreno, who already was a superb performance

· Dench *** as usual, great, but the role of grandmother is quite easy for a legend like her, the only way I can think she's the one nominated, and not Balfe, would be because some would think Balfe was a lead.

· Dunst **** More subtle than showy, it could be argue some category fraud here, but, while not among her best performances (Interview with the Vampire, Melancholia just to cite two better ones) it is nice to see her finally nominated

· Ellis *** another case of easy, Oscarbaity role, in comparison with other achievements. The most difficult things were to stay afloat in Will Smith's show (he's superb) and the physical / coaching side of the performance, but again, we're in the wife supporting the husband with a vision that has flooded this category for... ever?