Pardon us, but what the f--- is going on with the actress categories at the Oscars?

Who knew that actresses actressing in their respective projects wouldn't be the most dramatic showcase in Hollywood, as the industry continues to navigate awards season chaos in anticipation of answering the question: Who will be nominated for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress among the 2025 Oscar nominations?

Sometimes, you get a clean-sweep year where everyone from the critic and journalist groups to the industry folks align from the start on a contender such as Blue Jasmine lead Cate Blanchett. In other years, it seems like not even the trio of Golden Globe, SAG, and Critics Choice Awards nods can vault the likes of Jennifer Lopez (Hustlers) into Oscars territory. While the distinction between the types of voters (Globes and Critics Choice are non-industry folks; SAG and BAFTA are professional collectives with membership that crosses over into the Academy) setting the race in motion is typically important to this discussion, looking at Best Actress first, a quad of primary contenders have crossed all boundaries and forged through with nods from all four bodies: likely winner Demi Moore (The Substance), Emilia Pérez's Karla Sofía Gascón, Anora's Mikey Madison, and Wicked actress Cynthia Erivo. Despite those constants in the contest, the fifth slot remains a head-scratching puzzle.

Before any voters cast their ballots, Maria star Angelina Jolie's experience (she's a prior winner with an additional nod plus a Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award to her credit) felt like the easiest guarantee of the bunch, and she showed up as a regular fixture on the precursor circuit with nods from the Globes and Critics Choice — until she stumbled with industry-leaning groups. Jolie failed to show up among the SAG (where she felt like a surefire contender, given her likability and star power in Hollywood) and BAFTA nominations, days after shockingly losing the Golden Globe to I'm Still Here star Fernanda Torres, whose sweet acceptance speech afforded the Brazilian performer a flashy introduction on national TV days before Oscar voting opened.

Torres' performance in an international title (I'm Still Here is also a Brazilian production) gave the project an added element of prestige, particularly among the Academy's growing international voting base. We often see these kinds of performances rise up over portrayals that might have more hardware on their report card (Lady Gaga in House of Gucci, who didn't miss any major precursor in 2021), but whom the international membership might still see as celebrities before true actors (this also might explain Lopez's historic snub for Hustlers as well).

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While Jolie is certainly in a precarious spot (it's statistically difficult to overcome a snub from both SAG and BAFTA), she's not totally out, either. With the weight of a Netflix campaign behind her, Jolie's recognition for the film comes for a skilled performance as a real-life, tragic entertainment figure (opera singer Maria Callas died in relative isolation in 1970s Paris), and required the actress to hone her real-life singing voice to tackle the part. Challenging an actress' traditional presence on screen is what Maria filmmaker Pablo Larraín does best, given his directing of Natalie Portman (Jackie) and Kristen Stewart (Spencer) toward against-type nominations in the past. Both Portman and Stewart reframed not only their own perception as actors in the eyes of audiences but also helped retrain the world's perception of the famous women they played. Larraín and Jolie push the same boundaries in terms of performance and their subject's legacy in Maria, which is always good for courting affection and intrigue.

While Larraín and Portman traveled a safer road toward her Best Actress nomination (Portman earned both SAG and BAFTA nods), there's a statistical path forward for Jolie, as evidenced by Stewart's trajectory ahead of her own 2022 nomination. Stewart similarly failed to show up at SAG and BAFTA, before squeezing into that year's Best Actress lineup. Jolie is, arguably, the better-known star, so she could easily follow suit.

The same can be said for Babygirl's Nicole Kidman, though she's at an even bigger stat-based disadvantage than Jolie despite winning the National Board of Review's top prize and scoring a Golden Globe nod, before missing SAG, BAFTA, and Critics Choice. And then there's Pamela Anderson, Kidman's fellow category nominee at the Golden Globes, who managed to squeeze into the SAG bracket. Such a feat was a monumental victory, given The Last Showgirl's smaller profile (Roadside Attractions isn't the industry's weightiest distributor) and the SAG nominating committee's wide-spanning pool of balloters hailing from all corners (and demographics) of the acting sector.

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The Last Showgirl also has a narrative that simply works. It's the kind of film that, after raking in a paltry $1.5 million over its first weekend in wide release, doesn't need audience support to build its profile in the good graces of voters. The film's self-reflexive, underdog tale of Anderson's titular Las Vegas showgirl struggling to survive in a profession that rejects her age holds a message that deeply resonates with voters — enough so that their affections bled over into the Supporting Actress category, with Jamie Lee Curtis shaking up that already chaotic race with her performance as a cocktail waitress, complete with an impressively improvised dance scene in the middle of a casino.

Poised for a potential afterglow nomination following her win for Everything Everywhere All at Once in 2023, Curtis made a late-breaking showing at SAG and BAFTA, the latter of which is even more impressive, considering the film's star, Anderson, didn't even show up among the British Academy's lead category.

All of that puts several Supporting Actress contenders in trouble. Only two mainstays have gone along for the majority of the current awards run so far: presumptive winner Zoe Saldaña (Emilia Pérez) and Ariana Grande (Wicked). Every other slot is up for grabs, with each remaining contender possessing a statistic that cancels out another competitor's, and vice versa. Curtis is a safe bet, with both BAFTA and SAG (two groups that, again, share Academy membership).

Elsewhere, Felicity Jones (The Brutalist) and Selena Gomez (Emilia Pérez) have Golden Globes and BAFTA, but not SAG or Critics Choice; Gomez, however, has the prestigious Cannes Film Festival award for Best Actress, an honor she shares with Gascón, Saldaña, and Adriana Paz — the last of whom could (and hear us out) show up as a surprise nominee. That's how you have to think in an age of increasingly unreliable statistics, where Marina de Tavira can get in for Roma with zero precursor traction (seriously, it was her only nomination of the entire year) based on the overwhelming support of the film around her.

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That logic can also be applied to Isabella Rossellini, whose report card isn't as stacked as Saldaña's or Grande's, but she does have a BAFTA nod and the Conclave tidal wave carrying her extremely short performance through the season. That film's overall profile needs to be studied, but that's another story for another day in the race. (For now, let it be known that Stanley Tucci is in for Supporting Actor.)

Other Supporting Actress contenders who stand a chance (albeit a small one) include Critics Choice and SAG-nominated Piano Lesson star Danielle Deadwyler (though she was notably snubbed in the past for Till), SAG nominee Monica Barbaro (A Complete Unknown), and The Substance's Margaret Qualley, who's got nods at the Globes and Critics Choice Awards fueling her bid. While stats can mean everything or nothing in the contemporary awards landscape, support for an individual film can make a world of difference in races like this. A Complete Unknown and The Substance are taking hold of the conversation in bigger ways (and en route to scoring major above-the-line nods, including the Best Picture category) than The Piano Lesson, which never really struck much of a cord with voters beyond Deadwyler's work.

All of this to say: Don't be surprised when you're surprised upon discovering the 2025 Oscar nominations for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress on Thursday morning, when nominees are revealed by Bowen Yang and Rachel Sennott. The 2025 Oscars telecast — hosted by Conan O'Brien — airs Sunday, March 2, on ABC and Hulu at 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT, with the official red carpet presentation beginning at 6:30 p.m. ET/3:30 p.m. PT.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly