A crisis management team has been appointed. Ditto a host – Jimmy Kimmel – whose deft handling of the 2017 best picture debacle (when La La Land was incorrectly announced rather than Moonlight) earned him a reputation as a safe pair of hands.
Rumours that Sarah Ferguson would present an award have been squashed. The Academy has set up a website memorialising 200 recently deceased industry players so as to avoid a repeat of this year’s Baftas backlash, when Phil Davis quit after an apparent snub of the late Bernard Cribbins.
The producers of this year’s Oscars are doing everything in their power to ensure Sunday’s ceremony is less dramatic – and certainly less violent – than last year’s, which was overshadowed by best actor winner Will Smith slapping presenter Chris Rock on stage.
Yet one battle for a statuette has already drawn blood: best actress. As soon as nominations were announced in January, hackles were raised by Andrea Riseborough’s inclusion in the final five. The British actor had not been considered a contender for her role in little-seen indie drama To Leslie; some queried the means by which she had secured a spot.
Others suggested her inclusion had come at the direct expense of two Black actors: Till’s Danielle Deadwyler and The Woman King’s Viola Davis. US TV network CNN said the incident raised “how much of an advantage it is to have famous white friends” – apparently in reference to a starry guerilla campaign that saw endorsements from Kate Winslet, Amy Adams and Gwyneth Paltrow.
The Academy then launched an investigation into possible malpractice by the film’s publicity team for sharing on Instagram a review comparing Riseborough’s performance with that of frontrunner Cate Blanchett – tactics expressly forbidden by the rulebook.
Riseborough was cleared of wrongdoing, but the affair tarnished the awards – and left a residue on the actor. Earlier this week, one anonymous Oscar voter said her inclusion “felt very mafia-ish”, although others have ventured that such umbrage was thanks to big studios being gazumped by a movie which has thus far taken just $30,000.
“Seems hilarious that the ‘surprise nomination’ (meaning tons of money wasn’t spent to position this actress) of a legitimately brilliant performance is being met with an investigation,” said Christina Ricci.
Riseborough herself has largely stayed out of the spotlight. In her sole interview over the past six weeks, she reported being “deeply impacted” by the “confusing” situation.
“The film industry is abhorrently unequal in terms of opportunity,” she said. “I’m mindful not to speak for the experience of other people because they are better placed to speak, and I want to listen.”
Yet suggestions of iffy tricks in the best actress race persisted right up to the close of voting on Tuesday. That day, fellow nominee Michelle Yeoh shared an article expressing hope voters would not further garland Blanchett, who has already triumphed twice.
“Detractors would say that Blanchett’s is the stronger performance,” read the screenshot of a Vogue article headlined It’s Been Over Two Decades Since a Non-White Best Actress Oscar Winner.
“[But] for Yeoh, an Oscar would be life-changing: her name would for ever be preceded by the phrase ‘Academy Award-winner,’ and it should result in her getting meatier parts, after a decade of being criminally underused in Hollywood.”
Yeoh swiftly deleted the post from her personal Instagram account – presumably as it constitutes the same breach of rules as those which led to Riseborough being investigated.
On Thursday, Academy president Janet Yang said the earlier controversy had been “a wake-up call” that meant her organisation would review campaign regulations to “make sure they reflect our changing environment; meaning a lot more social media”.
An unprecedented amount of campaign activity this year has unfolded online, with the Everything Everywhere All at Once push leaning especially hard on the sort of memes and tumblr-humour beloved by both its film-makers and fans – fans the Academy is eager to court.
Yet Instagram and Twitter, Snapchat and TikTok have also amplified the already relentless level of attention on those up for awards – in particular the female nominees. “Nothing happens in private,” says Variety executive editor Steven Gaydos. “No moment occurs without the potential for it to be instantaneously explosive and universal.”
Meanwhile, the post-#MeToo drive against red carpet culture, in which female actors all turned up in black and refused to answer questions about what they were wearing, now seems, says Gaydos, “like a charming bit of history from the 18th century”.
“It’s as antiquated as people doing minuets. The red carpet has come roaring back with no memory that only months ago there was a lot of tut-tutting about all this.”
The impact on those women who spend months beneath a global magnifying glass can be considerable. Last month, Emma Thompson said her spells on the awards circuit left her “seriously ill”.
“I just found the pressure of it and glare of it too much,” said Thompson, who won her first Oscar in 1993 for Howards End, was nominated the following year for The Remains of the Day and In the Name of the Father and took best adapted screenplay in 6 for Sense and Sensibility (her acting was also nominated).
“Modern awards campaigning was created by Harvey Weinstein in the 90s,” says Gaydos. “And Emma was certainly part of that.” The new intensity comes from a combination of the social media explosion, plus studios and publicist offices being populated by “consultants who all learned under Harvey the brutal hardball tactics of awards season campaigning”.
Active rejection of the Oscars is now much less common than in the past. Winners who have never attended the show include George C Scott (who called it “a two-hour meat parade”), Katharine Hepburn (“prizes are nothing”), Woody Allen (“I have no regard for that kind of ceremony”) and John Gielgud “(I really detest all the mutual congratulation baloney and the invidious comparisons which they evoke”).
Yet some veteran female stars, sufficiently secure in their status to not need to court awards bodies, are voicing their scepticism about the sanity and seemliness of the show. As well as Thompson, Blanchett herself earlier this year called awards that pit women against each other a “televised horse race”.
And within Hollywood, there is a consciousness that competing can take its toll. Smith’s on-stage outburst at the Dolby Theater last year was credited in part to the stresses of three months on the awards circuit – after half a year playing a heavily-beaten slave while shooting Emancipation.
“It’s a lot,” one anonymous publicist told the Guardian. “[Oscar campaigning] is not just a grind, it’s a grind you gotta never say is a grind. No wonder people snap.”
It’s a problem compounded by the general public, thinks Gaydos. “ People just don’t have a lot of compassion about how tough the life of movie stars is. The general attitude is: ‘You’re doing better than 99% of the people on the planet. I’m sorry this isn’t perfect, but get a grip.’”
