Yahoo Lifestyle “Succession” brothers Kieran Culkin and Jeremy Strong face off again with Best Supporting Actor Oscar nods
The costars often duked it out on the Emmys trail during their time on the hit HBO drama.
Roman and Kendall Roy are facing off once again — this time at the 2025 Oscars.
Succession stars Kieran Culkin and Jeremy Strong both scored Oscar nominations in the Best Supporting Actor category on Thursday morning, with Culkin earning one for his turn as chaotic cousin Benji in Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain and Strong for his stern portrayal of Roy Cohn in the polarizing Donald Trump biopic, The Apprentice, respectively.
The two are nominated for Best Supporting Actor alongside Yura Borisov (Anora), Edward Norton (A Complete Unknown), and Guy Pearce (The Brutalist).
Check out more from EW's The Awardist, featuring exclusive interviews, analysis, and our podcast diving into all the highlights from the year's best in TV, movies, and more.
Peter Kramer/HBO
A Real Pain and The Apprentice mark Culkin and Strong's first major films since sharing the screen together in Succession. During the hit HBO drama's four-season run, the pair frequently found themselves duking it out in the same Emmys category, with Strong taking home the award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series in 2020 and Culkin winning the category in 2024.
Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, Culkin revealed that Eisenberg's script first drew him to A Real Pain. The film — which Eisenberg wrote, directed, and starred in — follows a pair of recently reunited cousins (Eisenberg and Culkin) as they embark on a trip to visit their late grandmother's former home in Poland.
“It's very rare that I read something and I go, 'Oh, I fully understand who this person is. I have no questions, and I don't want to talk about it,'" Culkin explained at the time. "I feel like I didn't make the connection until after we each shot the movie, but it was like, I know somebody exactly like this, that I'm very close with. I read it and went, 'Oh, I know how to do that.'"
Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty
Jeremy Strong and Kieran CulkinWhile Culkin had an innate understanding of his character, Strong heavily researched Cohn in order to properly portray the prosecutor opposite Sebastian Stan's Donald Trump in The Apprentice. (Stan also received a Best Actor nomination.)
"It has to go beyond something simply mimetic," Strong told EW for our October cover story. "You are trying to render, with a certain level of exactitude, this person, their behavior. In Roy's case, the way he spoke and carried himself physically. But that stuff is all, in a way, cosmetic. The real thing that you grapple with is trying to understand them as best you can and inhabit their struggle. With this, it was peering into the heart of darkness."
The 97th Academy Awards will air on Sunday, March 2, at 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT on ABC. See the full list of 2025 Oscar nominations.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
