2021 Oscar Predictions: SUPPORTING ACTRESS (September)

While Netflix opted out of all festivals this fall, Venice and TIFF gave us Pieces of a Woman, which the streamer picked up and added to its Jenga-style stack of Oscar players. With it came Volpi Cup winner Vanessa Kirby (but more on her later in Best Actress) and Ellen Burstyn. The 6-time Oscar nominee and Best Actress winner in 1975 hasn’t been nominated for 20 years but her performance here was heavily lauded at both festivals and she enters the top 10 this month.

Two more additions this month are Emmy, Grammy and 6-time Tony winner Audra McDonald in MGM/UA’s Respect and Charlene Swankie in Nomadland. For McDonald, she replaces co-star Mary J. Blige in the top 10 only for possible screen time. Much is still up in the air about the Aretha Franklin biopic (including a rumored 3-hour runtime) but McDonald is playing her mother, Barbara Franklin, which could be a juicy role. For non-actor Swankie, her turn in Searchlight Pictures’ Nomadland provided some of the film’s most poignant moments and could very well end up like Roma‘s Marina de Tavira a few years ago and be bypassed by all precursors only to land an Oscar nomination after all.

Two top 10ers from last month are off the list completely, as their films were pulled for late 2021 release: Ariana DeBose from West Side Story and Ana de Armas from Deep Water. Both are 20th Century Studios releases.

Here are my ranked 2021 Oscar predictions in Supporting Actress for September.

Green – moves up; Red – moves down; Blue – new entry this month

1. Glenn Close – Hillbilly Elegy (Netflix)
2. Olivia Colman – The Father (Sony Pictures Classics)
3. Amanda Seyfried – Mank (Netflix)
4. Saoirse Ronan – Ammonite (Neon)
5. Youn Yuh-jung – Minari (A24)
6. Helena Zengel – News of the World (Universal Pictures)
7. Ellen Burstyn – Pieces of a Woman (Netflix)
8. Audra McDonald – Respect (MGM/UA)
9. Charlene Swankie – Nomadland (Searchlight Pictures)
10. Lesley Manville – Let Him Go (Focus Features)

Other contenders: Mary J. Blige – Respect (MGM/UA), Priyanka Chopra – The White Tiger (Netflix), Toni Collette – I’m Thinking of Ending Things (Netflix), Dominique Fishback – Judas and the Black Messiah (Warner Bros), Tiffany Haddish – The Card Counter (Focus Features), Nicole Kidman – The Prom (Netflix), Natasha Lyonne – The United States vs Billie Holiday (Paramount), Talia Ryder – Never Rarely Sometimes Always (Focus Features), Meryl Streep – The Prom (Netflix), Marisa Tomei – The King of Staten Island (Universal Pictures), Olivia Williams – The Father (Sony Pictures Classics), Debra Winger – Kajillionaire (Focus Features)