FINAL 2023 Oscar Predictions: SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Chaos reigns.

Best Actress might be a very close two-person race but Supporting Actress is where the action is with three contenders are realistically vying for a win this year and where four nominees are here for the first time.

Angela Bassett (Black Panther: Wakanda Forever) started it off with wins at the Golden Globes and Critics’ Choice, and even though she had clearly not been the overall critics’ pick during the pre-televised show season, there was an air of veteran coronation beginning to emerge for the actress, whose career has been peppered with brilliant performances but a shocking lack of awards recognition. Her first nomination came 29 years ago, in Best Actress for the Tina Turner biopic What’s Love Got to Do With It?, where she lost to Holly Hunter in The Piano. But things started turning…quickly. In short, Angela Bassett will probably not do the thing.

The actual critics’ favorite, Kerry Condon (The Banshees of Inisherin), then swooped in and won BAFTA over four of her Oscar competition and while many had Condon in the top spot long before that, it signified a shift, one of many in this category this season because…

…the SAG Awards happened. Jamie Lee Curtis, as part of the historic Everything Everywhere All At Once sweep, took home the Actor. It was a less surprising win than you’d think; SAG is a big fan of career wins in this category, especially when it’s among the first real recognition they’ve gotten. Now, JLC is a BAFTA winner (for Trading Places, 40 years ago!) and she was nominated in this category for 1994’s True Lies but this win felt in part a career win and understandably so. Her deprecating speech and support of her co-stars and of other performances outside of her own film has been warmly received and it’s the kind of campaigning that hits exactly the right note. She’s in the film for just over 12 minutes but she has the scenes.

How much impact does SAG coming after BAFTA this season? It’s been a while since that happened, you’d have to back to 2000-2002, which provided us some upheaval those first two years in this category.

Like I did with Supporting Actor, let’s chart the SAG-BAFTA correlations from 2000 to now and see what we can glean from this exciting race.

When you take away the * exceptions and just look at non-sweep, fractured years where all things were essentially equal (no missed noms, weird category placements or eligibility) there are really just two examples we can focus on: 2007 when Ruby Dee won SAG for American Gangster and Tilda Swinton won BAFTA then the Oscar and 2013 when Lupita Nyong’o won SAG, Jennifer Lawrence won BAFTA for American Hustle (one of Oscar’s all-time flops, a film that earned 10 nominations and won zero), then Nyong’o came back to win the Oscar. Now, no years or comparisons are apples to apples and they’re never meant to be. They’re anecdotal and merely bits of history we can look to for guidance. For. Swinton, she was the sole recognition for Michael Clayton, a highly respected film with nominations for Best Picture, Director, Original Screenplay, Score and two other acting nods going up against a SAG winner and veteran who was the only nomination for her film. For Nyong’o, she was in that year’s Best Picture winner (12 Years a Slave) whose only other win was Adapted Screenplay. Is Jamie Lee Curtis like Ruby Dee? No. Her film has 11 Oscar nominations and is the Best Picture frontrunner. Is Kerry Condon like Tilda Swinton? Well, now we’re getting somewhere. She could be the best chance Banshees has to win and Oscar but there’s a very interesting streak happening in this category that helps her, a very specific one.

For the last eight years, beginning with Patricia Arquette in 2014’s Boyhood, every Supporting Actress winner has been the only Oscar win from her film. How much credence and adherence should we give that streak, especially in a season where we’ve so many records broken and history being made? Will it hold? If you’ve read my predictions for Original Screenplay, I think it will. But do I think an EEAAO sweep could scoop up JLC at the Oscars like it did at SAG? You bet.

Here are my final 2023 Oscar winner predictions for Supporting Actress.