The Gotham Awards continued the all-season trend of 90s icons showing up to every event. Nicole Kidman, Demi Moore, and Pamela Anderson, were all on hand last night, keeping up visibility for their films.
Anderson is the one doing the heaviest lifting—so far, she hasn’t built any momentum for The Last Showgirl. Given how competitive this year’s Best Actress race is, I wonder if distributor Roadside Attractions wouldn’t have been better off holding Showgirl for next year and taking their time to build a centerpiece campaign around Anderson finally getting a serious dramatic role. It just feels like a tack-on to this year’s already overcrowded field, even though Pamela Anderson has been very game to show up and promote the film and her performance.
This is not on her, but it’s looking more and more like Roadside missed the mark with this film.
But the Best Actress race still feels wide-open. Anora’s Mikey Madison has been the presumed frontrunner for months, but Demi Moore has stayed in contention since Cannes, and Nicole Kidman has Babygirl finally coming out this month, which should give her a boost, too. The problem for Mikey is that while the Academy loves ingenues, they love icons, too, and this year offers a smorgasbord of icons. I still think she’s a strong contender, but the odds are narrowing between her and the more established actresses. It also feels like this might be a year where the Academy goes for the comfort of the known, which will benefit older/more established actors who are already familiar to voters, like Saoirse Ronan, widely admired as one of the best of her generation and already a four-time nominee. She could even be a double nominee this year, for leading actress with The Outrun and supporting actress with Blitz.
And then there’s Danielle Deadwyler, co-star of The Piano Lesson. She, along with the rest of the cast, received the Gothams’ Ensemble Tribute. She’s a strong contender for a Best Supporting Actress nomination, but as we learned during the Andrea Riseborough/To Leslie debacle, it can be difficult to get Academy voters to watch films centering Black characters. Will enough people see The Piano Lesson to feel motivated to vote for it? Has Deadwyler built up enough of a reputation that people will vote for her blindly (as they will for Denzel Washington)? Netflix is putting significant resources into The Piano Lesson’s award campaign, it’s just not clear if it’s working.
Deadwyler is a constant on the trophy trail, but is it enough?
