It’s awards season in Hollywood, a time for red carpet glam, stirring speeches, and poking fun at the stars. This year is Conan O’Brien’s first time to wink, wink, nudge, nudge the actors during their biggest night.
As always, there are a few milestones that have been set. It’s the first time since 1968 that two musicals have been featured in the Best Picture category, namely Wicked and Emilia Pérez. The latter has also broken the record for the most Oscar nominations earned by a film not in the English language. Its star, Karla Sofía Gascón, is the first openly trans actor to be nominated for an Oscar. As for Wicked, nominated for 10 Oscars, its star Cynthia Erivo has received a nomination for Best Actress. If she wins, she’ll attain EGOT status: meaning she’ll have won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony. But the Best Actress category looks set to be an unpredictable one, since no single actress has been sweeping the category this year.
It's the opposite story for Best Supporting Actress, with Zoe Saldaña dominating the category. She’s already won the BAFTA, SAG, and Critics Choice Award for her performance in Emilia Pérez, so the Oscar seems a sure thing. Saldaña won’t just be on our screens at the Oscars in March, she’ll also be reprising her role as Joe McNamara in Special Ops: Lioness, so make sure you watching her when the second season starts on 24 March on M-Net.
Another sure bet seems to be Kieran Culkin, for Best Supporting Actor for his role in A Real Pain. Like Saldaña, he’s also won the BAFTA, SAG, and Critics Choice Award this year. Viewers will likely recgonise him as Roman Roy from Succession, another role that has won him multiple awards. If you haven’t yet seen that great performance, check out all four seasons of the superb show on Showmax. Funnily enough, Jeremy Strong, who plays Culkin’s brother Kendall Roy in Succession, has been nominated in the same category, for his performance in The Apprentice.
The Best Actor category, like Best Actress, is also not as surefire as the supporting categories. But force our hand for an answer, we’d say it’s likely to go to Adrien Brody for The Brutalist. Brody has won the award before, in 2003 for The Pianist. The other contenders in the category are Timothée Chalamet, Colman Domingo, Ralph Fiennes, and Sebastian Stan. If anyone else is going to take it, it’ll probably be Chalamet, for his performance as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown. But our money’s on Brody. Although this is still a Chalamet golden era in many ways. He happens to star in not one but two Best Picture nominees this year, having appeared in A Complete Unknown and Dune: Part Two.
The second instalment in the Dune film franchise, based on the books by Frank Herbert, has received five nominations. If you missed it in its Sunday night debut, you can watch it on DStv Stream. The first season of the prequel series, Dune: Prophecy, is available on Showmax.
As for the night itself, you can set your alarm for the wee hours to watch it live on Monday 3 March at 02:00 on M-Net Movies 1 channel 104. Alternatively, you can watch it later, at 22:00, on M-Net channel 101.
What are your predictions? Do they align with your favourites? Who are you looking forward to seeing on the red carpet? Share your thoughts on Facebook, X, Instagram, and TikTok using #MNetAwardsSeason.
Feature image: Alamy: Clockwise: The Brutalist, Wicked, Emilia Pérez, and A Real Pain.