American Fiction outperformed expectations by landing three nominations, including best ensemble, while the edgy May December and Saltburn and a trio of non-English-language contenders — Past Lives, Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest — were completely shut out, and Killers of the Flower Moon’s Leonardo DiCaprio was passed over, when SAG-AFTRA announced the nominees for its 2024 SAG Awards on Wednesday morning.
Does any of this matter for those with Oscar nominations on their mind?
SAG Award nominations are determined by the vote of a nominating committee comprising of 2,500 randomly selected members of the roughly 160,000-member guild, which, since the 2012 merger of SAG and AFTRA, includes not just actors but also TV weathermen, radio hosts and TikTokers. As a result, SAG Award nominees tend to be more populist but less international than the eventual selections of the actors branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences (whose own nomination voting will begin Thursday and runs through next Tuesday).
The SAG Awards‘ highest-profile category, best ensemble, ostensibly recognizes the cast of a film but is widely regarded as the guild’s equivalent of best picture. For many years, the lack of a best cast nom was seen as a kiss of death for a film’s best picture Oscar prospects, since only Braveheart had overcome the former and still won the latter. But since the Academy expanded its best picture category for the 2009-2010 awards season and began using a preferential ballot to pick the winner, that stat has gone out the window. Indeed, three of the last six best picture Oscar winners — The Shape of Water, Green Book and Nomadland — weren’t even nominated for the best ensemble SAG Award.
So while Wednesday’s best ensemble noms for Barbie, Killers of the Flower Moon and Oppenheimer, which were universally expected, and for American Fiction and The Color Purple, which were not, are certainly encouraging signs for those films’ best picture Oscar prospects, the teams behind other contenders like, say, Poor Things, should not despair.
More significant and interesting to me are surprise inclusions and omissions from the four individual acting races.
In the best actor competition, Golden Globe winners Cillian Murphy (Oppenheimer) and Paul Giamatti (The Holdovers) both got nods, as did Maestro‘s Bradley Cooper and American Fiction’s Jeffrey Wright, all four of whom look increasingly solid for Oscar noms. But DiCaprio’s miss is noteworthy — as is the fact that the guild opted to instead nominate Rustin’s Colman Domingo, a veteran character actor whose first film performance in a leading role has been wildly embraced at SAG-AFTRA screenings and Q&As.
Also coming up short: All of Us Strangers’ Andrew Scott, Saltburn’s Barry Keoghan, Air’s Matt Damon and Dream Scenario’s Nicolas Cage, all of whom were Golden Globe nominees.
Four of the five best actress nominees were also widely predicted: Golden Globe winners Lily Gladstone (Killers of the Flower Moon) and Emma Stone (Poor Things), plus Maestro’s Carey Mulligan and Barbie’s Margot Robbie. But whereas both Golden Globes and Critics Choice voters opted to nominate Sandra Hüller for her powerful performance in the French-language Anatomy of a Fall, the SAG Awards nom-com opted for American vet Annette Bening for her career-best turn in Nyad, which had previously been nominated for a Globe but not a Critics Choice Award. It’s nice to see her getting some well-deserved traction.
Also missing out: Past Lives’ Greta Lee, who was nominated for both Golden Globe and Critics Choice awards; as well as Globe nominees Natalie Portman (May December), Fantasia Barrino (The Color Purple), Cailee Spaeny (Prriscilla) and Alma Pöysti (Fallen Leaves).
Best supporting actor played out in an interesting way. Frontrunners Robert Downey Jr. (a Golden Globe winner for Oppenheimer) and Ryan Gosling (Barbie) were nominated alongside Killers of the Flower Moon’s Robert De Niro, American Fiction’s Sterling K. Brown and Poor Things’ Willem Dafoe — somewhat surprisingly crowding out two actors who had been nominated for both Golden Globe and Critics Choice awards: May December breakout star Charles Melton, who has also bagged several of the highest-profile critics group awards, and Dafoe’s costar Mark Ruffalo.
Also MIA: The Holdovers’ Dominic Sessa, Killers of the Flower Moon’s Jesse Plemons, BlackBerry’s Glenn Howerton, Air’s Chris Messina and two stars of All of Us Strangers, Jamie Bell and Paul Mescal.
Finally, the nom-com rubberstamped four supporting actresses who had previously been nominated for both Golden Globe and Critics Choice awards: Golden Globe winner Da’Vine Joy Randolph (The Holdovers), plus Danielle Brooks (The Color Purple), Emily Blunt (Oppenheimer) and Jodie Foster (Nyad). But one pick of both of those groups, May December’s Julianne Moore, was passed over by this one — in favor of Penélope Cruz, whose performance, everyone seems to agree, is the very best thing about Ferrari, but had been overlooked until today.
Left on the outside looking in: Golden Globe nominee Rosamund Pike (Saltburn); Critics Choice nominee America Ferrera (Barbie); The Color Purple‘s Taraji P. Henson; Air’s Viola Davis; American Fiction’s Erika Alexander, Issa Rae and Tracee Ellis Ross; All of Us Strangers’ Claire Foy and the aforementioned Sandra Hüller, for her other contending performance, in The Zone of Interest.
The 30th SAG Awards will stream on Netflix on Feb. 24.