2025 Oscar Predictions: SUPPORTING ACTRESS (August)

Category placement can be tricky, especially without confirmations and there are a few contenders who might be straddling the line a bit. The Venice and Telluride film festivals begin next week and will answer some of those questions for us as we see the films and begin defining it by ‘screen time,’ but we know that isn’t always the overriding factor in the strategy of an awards path.

Borderline leads go supporting all the time, and often win when they do. It’s rarer to go the other way. Last season saw many thinking that Lily Gladstone should have been in supporting, possibly securing a win in the process, and that campaigning lead was a less winnable scenario. While she didn’t win, I’m not sure it ‘proved’ the naysayers right. Would she have been able to best Da’Vine Joy Randolph, who made a clean sweep of both critics and industry awards? It’s tough to say but one thing that isn’t is that the historical context of Gladstone even being nominated was a real goal and an achievable one. The best recent example of a potential supporting performance opting for a lead campaign and winning would be Olivia Colman for 2018’s The Favourite. With less screen time than her co-star and supporting actress nominee Emma Stone (and more than her other supporting actress-nominated co-star Rachel Weisz), Colman bucked tradition to take the gold.

This year has no less than five women, from two films and both from Netflix, who some seem to think have some wiggle room for campaigns but I feel confident in my confirmations to say that’s not the case. In the cases of the Cannes-winning actress from Emilia Pérez – Karla Sofía Gascón, Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez and Adriana Paz – only Gascón is being campaigned lead. For Danielle Deadwyler in The Piano Lesson (see trailer here), we actually have two previous examples of a winning and a losing strategy for category placement in an August Wilson film adaptation…and they’re both Viola Davis. Davis won the Tony Award for lead actress in the role of Rose Maxson for Fences in 2010. Six years later, for the feature film adaptation, she opted for a supporting run and won the Oscar. Cut to 2021 where Davis was once again in an adaptation of Wilson’s work, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, and opted for a lead run at the Oscars for a role that had previously earned a featured actress nomination (the Tony version of ‘supporting) in 1985. Which brings us to Deadwyler. The stage the role of Berniece earned S. Epatha Merkerson a Tony nomination for featured actress for the 1990 production. For the 2022 revival however, that role (played by Danielle Brooks, Oscar-nominated last season for The Color Purple) didn’t net a Tony nom. Is there a possibility that Deadwyler would go lead here? Is the role there for it or is it simply too risky when a supporting run is the safe bet?

There could be one more in Lady Gaga for Joker: Folie à Deux and no doubt, if you follow me and my predictions here there’s a good chance you’re probably following someone who thinks that this is a possibility. Is it? Sure. Anything is possible when you know nothing but once Venice unveils Gaga’s version of Harley Quinn and we have everything from screen time to perspective to impact, then we’ll know. But I’m not going to have her here until we do, be it instinct or arrogance.

Academy Awards nominations will be announced January 17, 2025 and the 97th Oscars will be held on March 2.

Here are my 2025 Oscar predictions in Supporting Actress for August.

1. Danielle Deadwyler – The Piano Lesson (Netflix)
2. Zoe Saldaña – Emilia Pérez (Netflix)
3. Tilda Swinton – The Room Next Door (Sony Pictures Classics)
4. Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor – Nickel Boys (Amazon MGM)
5. Saoirse Ronan – Blitz (Apple Original Films)
6. Joan Chen – Dìdi (Focus Features)
7. Isabella Rossellini – Conclave (Focus Features)
8. Fernanda Montenegro – I’m Still Here (Sony Pictures Classics)
9. Lesley Manville – Queer (TBA)
10. Jennifer Lopez – Unstoppable (Amazon MGM)

Next up: Maria Bakalova – The Apprentice (Briarcliff Entertainment), Monica Barbaro – A Complete Unknown (Searchlight Pictures), Kathy Burke – Blitz (Apple Original Films), Carrie Coon – His Three Daughters (Netflix), Selena Gomez – Emilia Pérez (Netflix), Elizabeth Olsen – His Three Daughters (Netflix), Renate Reinsve – A Different Man (A24), Rachel Sennott – Saturday Night (Sony Pictures)

Other contenders: Juliette Binoche – The Return (Bleecker Street), Zoe Chao – Nightbitch (Searchlight Pictures), Glenn Close – The Deliverance (Netflix), Dolly De Leon – Between the Temples (Sony Pictures Classics), Elle Fanning – A Complete Unknown (Searchlight Pictures), Ariana Grande – Wicked Part I (Universal Pictures), Jennifer Grey – A Real Pain (Searchlight Pictures), Moses Ingram – The End (NEON), Connie Nielsen – Gladiator II (Paramount Pictures), Adriana Paz – Emilia Pérez (Netflix), Margaret Qualley – The Substance (MUBI), Emily Watson – Small Things Happen (Lionsgate), Robin Wright – Here (Sony Pictures), Michelle Yeoh – Wicked Part I (Universal Pictures)

Lead or supporting?: Cynthia Erivo – Wicked Part 1 (Universal Pictures), Ariana Grande – Wicked Part 1 (Universal Pictures), Salma Hayek – Without Blood (Fremantle), Lady Gaga – Joker: Folie à Deux (Warner Bros), Julianne Moore – The Room Next Door (Sony Pictures Classics), Saoirse Ronan – Blitz (Apple Original Films), Tilda Swinton – The Room Next Door (Sony Pictures Classics)

2024 or 2025?:  Michaela Coel – Mother Mary (A24), Melissa Barrera – The Collaboration (TBA), Toni Collette – Juror #2 (Warner Bros), Jamie Lee Curtis – The Last Showgirl (TBA), Laura Dern – Jay Kelly (Netflix), Anne Hathaway – Mother Mary (A24), Nina Hoss – Hedda (Amazon MGM), Vicky Krieps – Father, Mother, Sister, Brother (TBA), Imogen Poots – Hedda (Amazon MGM), Charlotte Rampling – Father, Mother, Sister, Brother (TBA), Daisy Ridley – Women in the Castle (TBA),, Kristin Scott Thomas – Women in the Castle (TBA)