I am in a hotel ballroom in Los Angeles, two floors below street level, the kind of venue I associate with family barmitzvahs and work parties. But I am talking to neither a cousin nor a colleague. Instead, I am talking to Will Smith.
So, Will, I say, just about resisting breaking into “In west Philadelphia, born and raised …” Have you been practising your Oscars speech since you were 12?
“No, not at all,” he begins, then notices me writing his God-like words in my notebook. “Wait now, this isn’t an interview! We’re just chilling, OK?”
OK, Will, I say. And so, the Fresh Prince and I chill.
Well, for five seconds anyway, until someone else comes along demanding the sunbeam of his attention. Just behind him, Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz whisper and giggle to one another. Behind them, Benedict Cumberbatch, Andrew Garfield, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Paul Thomas Anderson stand in a cluster, talking intensely. As I walk back to my seat, film producer David Dinerstein comes up to me and asks, “Excuse me, have you seen my director?” I have, as it happens – it’s Questlove, and he’s two tables away from us, sitting next to Denzel Washington.
This is the Oscar nominees luncheon, the official moment the Oscars meat machine really grinds into action. The usual reason for the annual lunch is the big photo, in which all the nominees are photographed together, school picture-style. But this year, the Academy has decided that while it’s now safe for more than 200 people to eat lunch next to one another in a basement for four hours, it’s not yet safe for them to pose for a photo together. Instead, this year, they will pose in socially distanced batches of a dozen or so. No one ever came to Hollywood for sensible ideas.
Events kick off in what I guess could be described as the foyer, but is really little more than a carpeted corridor next to an underground car park. This is where the nominees mill around before the lunch itself. The first person I spot is Kenneth Branagh, who has three nominations this year (best original screenplay, best director and best picture, all for Belfast), surely making him a super-nominee. Is this the least glamorous film event he’s ever been at?
“It’s pretty knockabout, isn’t it? And it’s defiantly anti-anti-Covid,” he says, looking at all the unmasked people spraying canapés on one another. “But this is a very nice event because there are no prizes, so you can just say ‘hello’ and ‘well done’ to people you admire. Plus, they mix everyone up so you’re sat with so many new people.”
Branagh’s last point, about being sat with people from other films, comes up a lot when I talk to the nominees, suggesting, perhaps, an understandable exhaustion some feel by the end of awards season, after travelling around for months with the people from their film.
“The first time I came, I was sat with an animator and a makeup artist. It’s eclectic, which I like,” says JK Simmons (best supporting actor nominee for Being the Ricardos.) Not that he’s entirely thrilled about being here this year: “I’m filled with Covid dread, as usual, but other than that it’s delightful,” he says, with a wary look around what could be the biggest celebrity super-spreader event in history. Simmons keeps his mask on for the entire event.
Most people bring their partner as their plus one – Maggie Gyllenhaal (best adapted screenplay, The Lost Daughter) is accompanied by Peter Sarsgaard, who somehow actually looks good in a bright yellow suit; young Kodi Smit-McPhee (best supporting actor, The Power of the Dog) grips the hand of his girlfriend, Rebecca Phillipou, looking for all the world as if they were en route to the prom. But Lin-Manuel Miranda (best original song, Encanto) brings his most excellent father, the political strategist, Luis A Miranda Jr.
Are the two of them excited about Lin-Manuel’s imminent membership of the EGOT club, for people who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony?
Lin-Manuel winces: “You say that like it’s a fait accompli! It hasn’t happened yet, but it would be a pretty cool club to join.”
I tell him that the Uber driver who drove me to the lunch had We Don’t Talk About Bruno on the stereo, the ubiquitous song he wrote for Encanto.
“My kids are really into that song!” he says, looking genuinely astonished.
Your kids and everyone else’s, Lin, I say.
“And that makes me very happy,” he grins.
Any discussion about winning is the one big faux pas at this lunch. For some, it’s because it’s a potential jinx. For others, it’s because, they insist, they’re “just enjoying the ride” (Andrew Garfield, best actor, tick tick… BOOM!) Everyone is, of course, ludicrously overdressed for a Monday lunchtime, and the big trend at this lunch is showing your stomach, as modelled by Kristen Stewart (best actress, Spencer), Coda’s Emilia Jones and Gyllenhaal. Someone who is very much not modelling this trend is Guillermo del Toro (best picture, Nightmare Alley), who is the nominee everyone wants to talk to, and he greets them all with an anti-anti-Covid smooch on the cheek.
At last, we are ushered into the ballroom, which is filled with circular tables, each with chairs for 10 or so people. Everyone is assigned to a table and Gyllenhaal and Sarsgaard are sat with Jessica Chastain (best actress, The Eyes of Tammy Faye), Stewart is sat a stone’s throw away from Billie Eilish (best original Song, No Time to Die). I am seated back to back with Stewart and next to the delightful Bob Morgan (best costume design, Dune) and his partner, Philip Schurer, an actor. This is Morgan’s first nomination and, for the occasion, Schurer accessorised his tux with a pin of the Ukrainian flag.
“It was pretty surreal getting ready for this while watching the news. Now here we are, drinking champagne while people are running for their lives,” Morgan says. In fact, we are drinking Coppola chardonnay at this point while waiters bring our three course gluten-free meal.
In recent years, the Oscars have felt like an exercise in self-flagellation, with politically charged acceptance speeches far outnumbering the jokes. At first, it looks like this lunch will maintain the tradition when a slide appears on the large screen at the front of the room: “We gather to celebrate your nomination on the ancestral lands of the Tongva people.” But perhaps it’s because the news is so unremittingly terrible, or maybe it’s that the Oscars have been leaching viewers, but someone has decided that people need laughs rather than lectures. So we next get a short satirical film from Saturday Night Live’s Kate McKinnon about how to accept awards, which is far too funny to only be seen by 200-or-so people.
Then the Oscars’ very enthusiastic producer, Will Packer, takes to the stage. “[After Covid], we are all survivors. And the people in this room are thrivers,” he says solemnly. “We are part of an industry that makes people feel something. In that sense, you are all essential!” This, unsurprisingly, gets big applause.
Academy president David Rubin sums up the mood in his speech, which begins with an announcement that the Academy “voices unconditional support for the people of Ukraine. What a time. OK, welcome to the great tradition of celebrating the Oscars!” he says, and then thanks the 10 zillion sponsors. What a time … but as long as there are advertisers, the show must go on.
There are some notable no-shows – most notably, The Lost Daughter’s Olivia Colman and The Power of the Dog’s Jane Campion, Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons. Despite that, when Alfred Molina reads out all the nominees’ names to call them up for the mini-group photos, each one getting enthusiastic applause, it takes so long that Stewart turns around to me and asks, massaging her palms, “Don’t your hands hurt?” They do, but I don’t follow her lead in resolving the problem by smacking the backs of my hands together.
If one were to predict winners by which nominees get the biggest applause in the room, a betting man would put money on Eilish, Questlove (best documentary feature, Summer of Soul), Aunjanue Ellis (best supporting actress, King Richard) and, most of all, Will Smith (best actor, King Richard). And Smith knows it, pumped with excitement as he jogs up to the photographer, bumping fists with Chastain. Looking at his kingdom, he was finally there, to sit on his throne as the Prince of Bel Air (and Hollywood). Photos done, the lunch finishes, and there is a rush for the door, as everyone frantically seeks out their car and driver to go on to the next event.
