Bravo to Michelle Williams for Resisting Category Fraud for 'The Fabelmans'

She might have hurt her own awards chances, but Williams deserves credit for acknowledging that her role in Steven Spielberg's movie is a lead No images? [Click here]( ID=167008;size=700x180;setID=527264;uid={EMAIL}7201649;click=template_daily_awards_wrap_up [Daily Awards Wrap Up] January 16, 2023 [- - -] Bravo to Michelle Williams for Resisting Category Fraud for ‘The Fabelmans’ She might have hurt her own awards chances, but Williams deserves credit for acknowledging that her role in Steven Spielberg’s movie is a lead [- - -] By Joe McGovern [The Fabelmans] Michelle Williams must have laughed, at least a little bit, that this was even a news story. Back in September, two weeks after Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans” premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, it was revealed in big headlines that the film’s studio intended to push Williams in the Best Leading Actress category for awards consideration. Awards pundits were shocked. Because at that point, even though the film wouldn’t open for two months, it seemed a safe bet that Williams’ acclaimed performance as Mitzi Fabelman, the protagonist’s kooky, withdrawn mother, was a lock to be nominated for and even win the Best Supporting Actress Oscar. But what was that assumption based on? It wasn’t the performance itself, but instead an expectation that the studio, Universal, would take advantage of the ever-common practice of category fraud, where a lead or co-lead role is pushed in the supporting category for a better shot at a nomination. Whether her role and performance qualified as a lead – it is and she does – was irrelevant to pundits. “Why isn’t she gaming the system,” they were saying, “since everybody else does?”  Williams later revealed that she personally asked Universal to campaign her in the lead category, which of course is where she belongs. Her roles in “Brokeback Mountain” and “Manchester By the Sea” were genuine supporting performances and nominated for Oscars accordingly. The scope of her role in “The Fabelmans” is simply too important to the plot, both in terms of screen time and story arc, to be marked down to the lower category. It is a lead role. And so bravo to Williams for insisting on a Best Actress push, even if her chances at the gold hardware might have been better in the other category. As of now, about a week away from the Oscar nominations announcement, she is not considered a lock to be nominated. She missed out on a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination, a key precursor. But her decision marks a refreshing, wonderful resurrection of common sense in Oscar campaigning. If Williams is not nominated next week, she deserves even more credit.  To be clear, it is up to the 1,302 members of the Academy’s acting branch to decide which category to place an actor or actress. (The rules specifically tell them to make up their own minds.) And for sure, Williams could be nominated in the supporting category after all. But the studios spend a lot of time and money to set the compass for everybody else. And in the face of basic logic, one of the biggest propaganda tricks in recent decades has been the studios’ weird, cynical redefinition of what a leading role is. ID=167008;size=300x250;setID=523257;uid={EMAIL}7201649;click=template_daily_awards_wrap_up For example, a few years ago, when “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” opened, any sentient moviegoer understood that it was a movie with two male leads: Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio. Like “Midnight Cowboy” or “Amadeus” or “Giant” or “Network” or “Sleuth” or “The Dresser.” All of which, rightfully, scored two nominations in the Best Actor category at the Oscars. But even before “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” was released, in the summer of 2019, this narrative had gotten into the water supply: That Pitt was a supporting actor and DiCaprio was a lead. Who knows what that was based on? The two are equally important as protagonists in the story and have almost exactly the same amount of screen time. Perhaps it was propelled by the fact that Pitt had not won an Oscar for acting at that point, and stood a better chance of winning a supporting prize? (Which he ultimately did.) Well, there is a very long-standing tradition of that gamesmanship. Timothy Hutton won a supporting Oscar for a huge role in “Ordinary People.” Ditto Benicio del Toro for “Traffic.” And Haley Joel Osment was nominated in the supporting category for a film, “The Sixth Sense,” in which he appeared in practically every scene. Each case, even those three, can be taken on its merits: Hutton was a co-lead and del Toro was part of an ensemble, Osment was a child actor. But how in the world can they explain, a couple years ago in one of the oddest things ever to happen in the Oscar universe, nominating the two leading actors from “Judas and the Black Messiah,” Daniel Kaluuya and LaKeith Stanfield, in the supporting category? That indicated a level of mass befuddlement at the very notion that a movie can have two leading roles of the same gender. What were they thinking … or drinking? This sounds crazy at first, but after the Kaluuya and Stanfield situation, I believe that if “Thelma & Louise” was made today, the Academy’s acting branch would nominate Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis both for Best Supporting Actress instead of, as they did in 1992, for Best Actress. Or maybe, like the “Once Upon in Hollywood” example, they would put the two actresses in different categories – probably Sarandon for supporting because, like Pitt, she stood a better chance of winning there. Read the rest of Joe McGovern’s Awards Wrap Up column [here](. Read more of TheWrap’s awards coverage [HERE.]( [- - -] [Follow us on Facebook]( [Follow us on Twitter]( [Follow us on Instagram]( [Follow us on Linkedin]( TheWrap 1808 Stanford Street, Santa Monica, CA, 90404 [Preferences]( | [Unsubscribe]( This email was sent to {EMAIL}. If you are no longer interested you can [unsubscribe instantly](.