Teyana Time

As Sarah noted in our post-Globes coverage about Teyana Taylor and the Best Supporting Actress race, up until Sunday night, it was Amy Madigan’s performance in Weapons who was considered the frontrunner in the category. And she still is, I think, but she’s also not running away with it either with Teyana Taylor winning just as Oscar nominations voting kicked off on Monday.

And Teyana has other non-campaign opportunities keeping her at the forefront of the news cycle to assist with her campaign, with a role in Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s The Rip, premiering Friday on Netflix. She was on the red carpet with them last night, just hours after her new Vanity Fair cover story dropped.

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Covering Vanity Fair during award season? It’s definitely a boost. No one could know that it’d be the same week that she won the Golden Globe but the point is… the timing is great for Teyana as we look ahead to the Oscar nominations announcement a week tomorrow. (Which, by the way, is also the same day pre-sale begins for BTS world tour tickets so next Thursday will be some kind of clusterf-ck for me. Not that this is about me but I already told you this morning where my brain is right now. Everything leads back to BTS.)

Anyway. Not too long ago, for Teyana, the nomination (should she receive one) would have been the win. Now? She’s a contender for the win. She was nominated by the Screen Actors Guild, and it’ll be really, really interesting to see which way that breaks. Amy Madigan has been in the business a long time, she’s the “overdue” narrative. Teyana, meanwhile, is the breakout sensation in the business with a key role in a film that many expect to win the Oscar for Best Picture. And her range, so far, has been so impressive.

I wrote a couple of years ago about how spectacular she was in A Thousand and One and there was some early buzz for her back then about an Oscar run. That didn’t materialise but those of us who saw that film knew it was only a matter of time. She showed her dramatic abilities in that project, and both action and drama skills in One Battle After Another, and she wrapped on a comedy last year in a movie called 72 Hours that should be released later this year so Teyana is a multihyphenate on multiple levels.

She’s a musician, she sings and dances and choreographs and has directed her own videos. As an actor she worked in independent films, and bigger budget films, in thrillers and character studies and comedies, with auteur directors, emerging directors, and veteran performers. It’s impossible to be hyperbolic about her talent.

And we haven’t even gotten to the fashion. Because who else is doing it like Teyana Taylor?!

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If you haven’t already, her Vanity Fair piece is exactly the kind of profile we’ve been missing in magazines. She’s candid, she’s funny, no question is off the table, even if she chooses not to answer, she finds a way to distract you with some other insight that still satisfies. And then there’s this – Teyana being interviewed by a gospel choir, eleven minutes of pure entertainment that will also swell your heart. I love this idea, the creativity and imagination here, by everyone involved, from those who produced it, to the choir members, to Teyana herself with her answers. Right now, she is unstoppable.

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