Predicting the 96th Academy Awards Winners: Best Supporting Actress Category
If it’s March, then it must be time to make my Oscar Casting Networks predictions for the fourth time. In the first three years, I have gone a reasonably impressive nine out of 12 in the four acting categories. That’s a 75% success rate, which is enough to get you into the Hall of Fame, if not the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Museum. At the very least, it’s good enough to be asked back again, to pontificate for a public that is hopefully admiring, if not entirely adoring.
TLDR: I’m back and I’m ready to make predictions.
The rules are the same as in past years. I will talk about each category and single out the performer who I believe deserves the award, then tell you who I think is going to win, as they are not always the same. This year there are at least two instances of this —though neither of them appears today— as we talk about the Best Supporting Actress division. So let’s get right to it and mention the nominees.
They are: America Ferrera for Barbie, Danielle Brooks for The Color Purple, Da’Vine Joy Randolph for The Holdovers, Emily Blunt for Oppenheimer and Jodie Foster for Nyad.
Danielle Brooks is a wonderful actress who is delightful in The Color Purple, but her nomination is her award, especially since she is the only one from this much-anticipated movie whose name appears in this year’s tally of nominees.
Similarly, while I adore America Ferrera as an actress (and think she is terrific in Barbie), she is essentially nominated for a single monologue at the end of the movie. Her inclusion here was one of the biggest surprises of Nomination Day, so that alone should tell you something. Honestly, with all the hubbub of Margot Robbie not being nominated for Best Actress (more about that later), if she had been given The Monologue, it would be academic.
Ferrera’s nomination didn’t perplex me like Emily Blunt’s did. I’m a big fan of hers, too (okay, I am a big fan of all 20 nominees, and let’s stipulate that any criticism I might make is about the movie in which they appear and not them personally), but was sort of stunned that she has received as much awards season love as she has. Her role in Oppenheimer as Mrs. Oppenheimer is sort of a nothing part with one big scene at the end, which, like, Ferrera, is probably the reason why she’s here.
One of my big complaints about any Christopher Nolan film is how poorly he writes women, and Blunt’s character is no exception. Now that I think about it, the fact that she was able to do as much as she did without much to work with is probably why people have been so generous with the nominations this winter. This makes more sense to me.
I was thrilled that Jodie Foster earned a nod for Nyad, one of my favorite movies of the year. I actually wasn’t sure enough people would recognize her for a performance that was not nearly as flashy as the others, and was opposite powerhouse work by lead actress Annette Bening (again, we’ll come back to her in a couple of days). Foster never does anything but great work, but this is still the first time she’s been nominated in 29 years.
Like Tom Hanks, Foster is so consistently excellent that she rarely gets recognition for it. But her work in Nyad is the calming presence the movie needs, and she shines as brightly as Bening does. In most years, I would be firmly on Team Jodie to take home her third such trophy.
But this is not that year, because it is Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s year. Have you seen The Holdovers? If it’s not my favorite movie this year, it’s in the top three, and she’s a big part of the reason why.
Randolph, who is so hilarious as a profane NYPD detective on Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building, is simply transcendent here as a mourning mother who finds herself in an unlikely trio of abandoned people at a prep school in 1970s Massachusetts. She is funny, she’s heartbreaking and she ably rides that delicate balance of never becoming maudlin or melodramatic. It’s a career-defining role that blew my mind and made me certain that she will take this thing for a walk.
Who Should Win: Da’Vine Joy Randolph
Who Will Win: Da’Vine Joy Randolph
The 2024 Oscars takes place on March 10 at 4 p.m. PT/7 p.m. ET on ABC.
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