2020 Oscar Nomination Predictions: SUPPORTING ACTRESS (April)

Erik Anderson April 18, 2019

At this stage, the only thing more unknown than who will make it in next January is where studios will push their blurred ‘lead or supporting’ contenders. We saw last year how long it took Fox Searchlight to finally decide where to place Olivia Colman, Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz for The Favourite. It worked out in their favor, so to speak, as Colman surprised with her Best Actress Oscar win in February.

Two other elements make supporting categories tough; 1) often a performer will have more than one film in contention and 2) a studio can have multiple contenders from different films and must decide who and how to back more. For April, I’m going on instinct plus a little bit of intel as to what studio might push which performance harder.

There are some heavy hitters in supporting actress this year; previous Oscar winners and nominees like Annette Bening playing Senator Dianne Feinstein in The Report, Laura Dern in the Untitled Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig’s remake of Little Women and Brie Larson in Just Mercy will going up against first-time hopefuls like Thomas Harcourt McKenzie in Jojo Rabbit, Zhao Shuzhen in The Farewell and Janelle Monáe in Harriet. Last season Margot Robbie got close to an Oscar nod with Mary Queen of Scots after securing SAG and BAFTA nominations and this year has a potentially juicy role in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time..in Hollywood playing ill-fated actress Sharon Tate.

Here are my unranked 2020 Oscar Nomination predictions in Supporting Actress for April.

Annette Bening – The Report (Amazon)

Laura Dern – Untitled Noah Baumbach (Netflix)

Scarlett Johansson – Jojo Rabbit (Fox Searchlight)

Janelle Monaé – Harriet (Focus Features)

Margot Robbie – Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood (Sony/Columbia)

NEXT UP

Laura Dern – Little Women(Sony/Columbia)

Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie – Jojo Rabbit (Fox Searchlight)

Brie Larson – Just Mercy (Warner Bros)

Maggie Smith – Downton Abbey (Focus Features)

Zhao Shuzhen – The Farewell (A24)

OTHER CONTENDERS

Ellen Burstyn – Lucy in the Sky (Fox Searchlight)

Penélope Cruz – Pain and Glory (Sony Classics)

Toni Collette – Knives Out (Lionsgate)

Jamie Leigh Curtis – Knives Out (Lionsgate)

Jennifer Hudson – Cats (Universal)

Nicole Kidman – Untitled Roger Ailes aka Fair and Balanced (Lionsgate)

Nicole Kidman – The Goldfinch (Amazon/Warner Bros.)

Frances McDormand – The French Dispatch (TBD)

Bette Midler – The Glorias: A Life on the Road (TBD)

Anna Paquin – The Irishman (Netflix)

Florence Pugh – Little Women (Sony/Columbia)

Octavia Spencer – Luce (Neon)

Meryl Streep – The Laundromat (Netflix)

Meryl Streep – Little Women (Sony/Columbia)

Tilda Swinton – The French Dispatch (TBD)

Tilda Swinton – The Personal History of David Copperfield (TBD)

Tilda Swinton – The Souvenir (A24)

Marisa Tomei – Frankie (TBD)

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2020 Oscar Nomination Predictions: BEST ACTOR (April)

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.