SAG Awards upset incoming? Annette Bening (‘Nyad’) could win best actress

After last Sunday’s BAFTA Awards, many of the indecisive categories that were up in the air seem to be solidified, particularly Best Actress as Emma Stone has not yet lost a single precursor, being undefeated at the Golden Globes and Critics Choice Awards for “Poor Things.” With the Screen Actors Guild Awards coming this weekend, it seems that Stone will cruise her way to victory on her way to win her second Oscar for Best Actress, but she has to overcome the one last obstacle, which could shift the race to another contender: Annette Bening for her performance in Netflix’s sports biopic “Nyad.” Bening could sneak out an upset win for best female lead actress with the actors’ union and make this an exciting race.

This time last year, the SAG Awards became the ultimate turning point for the Academy Awards, having zero correlation with any of the four acting winners at BAFTA, but proving to be pitch perfect with the eventual Oscar winners. More specifically, now that SAG is the last main precursor for the acting categories, it has the most impact on Oscar voters, especially given that the awards are now held in the middle of voting for the winners. One of the most glaring instances last year was Jamie Lee Curtis’ shocking supporting victory for “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” beating out frontrunners and previous precursor winners Angela Bassett (“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”) and Kerry Condon (“The Banshees of Inisherin”). Her win and inspirational, energetic speech was able to swing the race to her favor on Oscar night, having only SAG as a hardware.

One thing we know SAG-AFTRA loves is rewarding respected veteran actors such as Viola Davis, Sam Elliott, William H. Macy, Glenn Close, and even last year in this category with Michelle Yeoh. Bening has had the longest career out of all her fellow nominees and is clearly beloved by her peers, winning on her first individual nomination for her lead performance in “American Beauty,” for which she also shared the film ensemble prize for 1999. All her sole nominations have since been in the lead categories for the movies “Being Julia,” “The Kids Are All Right” (also cited for best cast) and the television film “Mrs. Harris.”

This year as the titular long-distance marathon swimmer Diana Nyad, Bening is on her fifth Oscar nomination, having previously been mentioned for all of those aforementioned features and for her supporting role in “The Grifters” for 1990. The fact that she has yet to receive an Oscar could be a major factor for SAG voters as it was for Curtis last year. She shares the SAG category with Stone, Lily Gladstone (“Killers of the Flower Moon”), Carey Mulligan (“Maestro”) and Margot Robbie (“Barbie”). As it currently stands in our combined Gold Derby odds, Gladstone leads the pack with 69/20 odds and 1,840 users predicting her to win followed closely by Stone with 7/2 and the support of 1205 users. Shockingly, Bening is technically in last place, tied with Robbie and Mulligan with 9/2 odds and only 44 users on her side.

Even though Gladstone still seems in the prime position to take the prize, her last and only major win was at the Golden Globes and since then, she lost the Critics Choice to Stone, and was surprisingly snubbed at the BAFTAs, making her path to Oscar glory much harder, especially given that “Killers of the Flower Moon” missed major recognition for the screenplay and her leading co-star Leonardo DiCaprio. As for Stone, even though she has been dominating the awards circuit thus far, there might be some hesitancy as to whether to give her a second Oscar after having won her first back in 2017 for “La La Land” recently.

This race may seem sewn up for Stone, but it is not over yet. She still has strong competition, including Bening who has had a long career and SAG voters may want to reward her for the powerful and determined performance as an inspirational figure and they also have a propensity for giving performers awards that represent the entirety of their careers. So it would be quite the achievement for Bening and could add some suspense and give her a leg up in the Oscar race.

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