Mikey Madison, an Oscar mystery

Mikey Madison was making the press rounds in New York yesterday just after it was announced that she was nominated for Best Actress at the Oscars for her performance in Anora. This, too, is part of campaign strategy – make sure to get the candidate right out there, front and centre, on nomination morning so that there can be fresh photos to go along with the news. 

Of course there’s always a risk because Oscar nominations are never guaranteed (see Nicole Kidman, Denzel Washington, Angelina Jolie, Daniel Craig etc etc etc), but in Mikey’s case, through the season, it would have been a huuuuuuge shock if her name wasn’t called, she had that locked in months ago, literally, after Anora started its Oscar push in Cannes. 

If you’ve seen Anora, you know – Mikey delivers an exhilarating performance and it’ll be so exciting to see where her career goes from here as she’s just turning 26 in March and now with all the attention that Anora has captured this year, more and more opportunities will follow. You know what also helps? The fact that she has zero social media presence. This is rare. A Gen Z actor who is not on IG or TikTok?! Or if she is, it’s a Finsta, but that still means she’s not accessible, she doesn’t engage directly with the audience, she’s not out here encouraging parasocial relationships. 

And because of this, she remains unknown and unknowable. Which is a little strange and unexpected. Not only because of her age but because Anora has been described as Gen Z’s Pretty Woman so for its star, the actor who plays the title character, to not be engaging with its audience where its audience spends most of it’s time …well…it actually makes her an outlier. But it doesn’t not work in her favour either. 

Because Gen Z is kinda masochistic, lol. They live online, but they pine for those who withhold themselves from them online. Zendaya and Timothée Chalamet are good examples. They have social media accounts but don’t post often. But they almost don’t have to because everyone else posts about them constantly. Mikey not being online makes her that much cooler, that much more fascinating, so in a way, not participating in a digital strategy for Anora was strategic, too. 

Can she actually win? She’s definitely not a frontrunner and in her case, the nomination is probably the win. Right now, Demi Moore is the presumed favourite and that position will be further cemented if she takes the SAG where Fernanda Torres is not nominated. And she’s not nominated for a BAFTA either. But Fernanda is surging. As Sarah has noted, her Golden Globes-winning speech kicked off some steady and smart campaigning. 

Also, I was just talking about social media influence and there is so much social media activity in her favour and it’s only getting louder. Right now it feels like all of Brazil is behind her. Still… it would be a climb, an almost unprecedented upset considering previous markers along the path to Oscar that Demi has checked off. Some are saying, though, that this year has been so wild and unpredictable, anything can happen. So expect to see all the nominees out there doing what they can in the next few weeks to gain an edge and close the gap. The race is not over.