The mid-2020s category fraud backslide (and why we should worry about it)

There’s a brief moment in Sinners where, having just received a bizarre response to an innocuous question, Delta Slim stands mouth agape with his eyes slowly shifting as a sobering sense of terror begins to overtake him. Both funny and fear-inducing, it’s one of the many brilliant acting choices Delroy Lindo makes as he continually proves himself vital to the film’s ensemble. His is the kind of standout supporting performance that fully deserves awards attention, but even an overdue veteran in a massively popular movie is no match for a horde of fraudulent leads.

I was going to wait to address this issue until after I timed the performances in Hamnet, but its digital release is taking too long and I really don’t need the data to make my point. It must be acknowledged that many supporting performances like Lindo’s are being unfairly shut out of the current awards season by miscategorized lead turns. Though this is an unfortunately common situation, it hasn’t been this bad in quite a while, nor do I recall the awards enthusiast community ever being so apathetic about it.

We’ve arrived here five years after about half a dozen actors (including the stars of Judas and the Black Messiah) debatably ended up in the wrong categories on the 93rd Oscars ballot. The community very much cared to discuss the fraud then, just as they did last year when, after three glorious years of no such incidents, Kieran Culkin and Zoe Saldaña conned their way to inevitable wins.

Although roughly half of this year’s supporting Oscar nominees will be arguable leads, most of the people who used to care no longer seem to. Try bringing it up and you’ll likely be met with dismissal or even disdain from folks who have made their peace with studios pulling whatever crap they want as long as they can vacuously enjoy the season. It’s a familiar story – they got a three-year break from it during which it seemed like it wouldn’t rear its ugly head again, and now that it has, they don’t have the energy to deal with it. But it nonetheless must be dealt with.

I refuse to subscribe to the notion that Frankenstein, Hamnet, Sentimental Value, Sinners, and Wicked: For Good contain just one leading performance each. I said the same last year about Challengers, Emilia Pérez, The Piano Lesson, A Real Pain, The Substance, and Wicked: Part I, and even the year before that about The Holdovers, Killers of the Flower Moon, Maestro, and May December. I know that this greedy practice isn’t going to stop, but I want to at least get back to a point where it doesn’t go far and every supporting nomination is legitimate. We had that and lost it, but we can have it again.

Those mindlessly celebrating Stellan Skarsgård and Jacob Elordi’s success would do well to remember the resulting impact on Lindo and actors like him who don’t have the option to change categories, such as Aidan Delbis, Jacobi Jupe, and even Adam Sandler. If we don’t continue to call out category fraud, the actual performers for whom the supporting awards were created will keep being criminally overlooked as the distinction loses its meaning.

Now is not the time to lazily play along with the perpetrators, but rather to stop and ask what in the name of Diane Ladd we’re doing.