This week, the Academy met to consider the strange case of Andrea Riseborough. Nothing changed: After all that drama, Riseborough gets to keep her surprise Best Actress nomination for “To Leslie,” despite questions surrounding whether the grassroots campaign tactics crossed a line with social media posts and other alleged infringements.
Needless to say, while rule tweaks may be around the corner and nothing actually changed this week, the news cycle certainly took note. Suddenly, everyone is talking about a movie and performance that was on few people’s radars a short time ago. By virtue of its public statement about the Riseborough decision, the Academy’s executive committee only drew more scrutiny to the situation — and the movie itself. But what choice did they have?
In this week’s episode of IndieWire’s weekly podcast Screen Talk, Eric Kohn and Anne Thompson discuss these recent developments as well as their responses to “To Leslie,” which they both recently watched, and share their favorite Riseborough performances. They also explore whether or not all this attention could have an impact on the state of the Best Actress race (spoiler alert: doubtful, but not impossible).
Finally, they touch on a few awards possibilities from this year’s Sundance and trade thoughts on several new releases, from “You People” to “Knock at the Cabin.”
Watch the full episode above or listen to it below.
Screen Talk is produced by Azwan Badruzaman and available on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and Spotify, and hosted by Megaphone. Browse previous installments here, subscribe here, and be sure to let us know if you’d like to hear the hosts address specific issues in upcoming editions of Screen Talk.
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