The Academy Awards took center stage after Andrea Riseborough’s unexpected Best Actress Oscar nomination for her performance in To Leslie, seemingly at the expense of Viola Davis for The Woman King and Daniel Deadweiler for Till.
After the Oscar nominations were announced last Tuesday, Till director Chinonye Chukwu blasted the film industry for “perpetuating whiteness and perpetuating blatant misogyny toward black women,” and in a lengthy op-ed in the LA Times, film critic Robert Daniels wrote, “Although it’s easy to point the finger at Riseborough for taking a seat from black women, broken systems persist when we focus our anger on individuals… what does it say that black women who have done everything the institution asks of them—fancy dinners, private Academy screenings, meet-and-greets, glamorous TV spots and magazine profiles—are ignored when someone who has done everything outside the system is rewarded?”
Social media has also seen a resurgence of the #OscarsSoWhite hashtag, which first gained traction in 2016 after no white actors were nominated in any of the performance categories.
Daniel Deadweiler in Till. Photo: United Artists Releasing/Moviestore/REX/Shutterstock
Riseborough’s Oscar nomination came largely out of the blue, as she had rarely appeared earlier in the awards season; on the other hand, both Davis and Deadweiler were nominated for Screen Actors Guild Awards, and Davis for a Golden Globe. Riseborough’s only significant previous nomination is for the Independent Spirit Awards, which will be announced in March. However, To Leslie’s profile was raised by a concerted campaign involving a significant number of A-list actors, including Edward Norton, Charlize Theron, Jennifer Aniston and fellow Oscar nominee Cate Blanchett, who either hosted screenings and Q&As, name-checked of Riseborough at award ceremonies or posted on social media. To Leslie’s campaign was aided by two PR companies, Narrative and Shelter, and appears to be self-funded, while Till and The Woman King were backed by deep-pocketed studios United Artists and Sony respectively.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Ampas), the body that organizes the Oscars, said it would meet on Tuesday to “review” its rules for the campaign, saying it wanted to make sure “no directive is violated and let us know if changes to the guidelines may be needed in the new era of social media and digital communication.”
Ampas’ guidelines for the campaign emphasize that it must be “conducted in a fair and ethical manner” – for example limiting the number of screenings that can take place, determining the type of hospitality that can be offered and prohibiting nominees from connect directly with Oscar voters.
The success of the campaign on behalf of To Leslie also appears to have backfired on Riseborough herself, with Variety quoting an anonymous Academy member as saying: “No matter what happens, her reputation is tarnished, whether her campaign has done anything or not. “
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