Every crop of new Oscar nominees comes with a fresh batch of statistics and records. Many are firsts. Last year Lily Gladstone became the first Native American performer to be nominated for Best Actress for her performance in Killers of the Flower Moon. The year before Michelle Yeoh became the first woman of Southeast Asian descent to be nominated and win Best Actress for her performance in Everything Everywhere All At Once. This year is poised to have another historic nomination.
Karla Sofía Gascón is poised to be nominated in Best Actress for her performance in Emilia Pérez and if she is she will become the first openly transgender performer to be Oscar-nominated. “Openly” is an important distinction as Elliot Page was not out as a trans person at the time of his Best Actress nomination for Juno in 2008. It’s an incredible leap forward for inclusion.
Though, as with last year’s historic nomination of Lily Gladstone, the media push, the articles, the think pieces, and the bevy of precursor award wins that she nabbed didn’t amount to much when Emma Stone’s name was read on Oscar night. It all comes down to who The Academy’s broad voting body throws their support behind. Post Oscar nomination Gladstone’s career has taken off and has given more visibility to more culturally astute Native American stories. The same could be said for Gascón if she is nominated. With the nomination alone she could be on the cusp of a more impactful career as a trans actress and advocate for more nuanced and even portrayals of the trans experience.
It may be that category fraud played into last year’s decision, as well as, past year’s decisions. Category fraud is a broad way of describing when a studio or performer thinks their chances at a win for any award are better in one category over another. This happens in egregious ways like David Niven (Separate Tables, 1958) and Anthony Hopkins (The Silence of the Lambs, 1991) winning Best Actor for 15 and 16 minutes of screen time, respectively. More often it happens when a strong performance that is typically a co-lead gets shifted to a Supporting category. A recent example would be Viola Davis’ work in Fences (2017) being nominated for, and winning, Best Supporting Actress, which was undoubtedly a lead performance.
In this way, last year’s favorite, Lily Gladstone was elevated to Best Actress even though her performance in the film is very clearly a supporting role. The potential history-making nomination for Karla Sofía Gascón is, like Viola Davis’ turn, a co-lead. Her role could even be considered a more supporting role than co-star Zoe Saldaña’s. Saldaña’s character drives a lot more of the plot of the first act. This is minor category fraud at best and isn’t enough to get people to vote against her, but what really could sink Gascón’s chances of a win is if more people vote for someone else, namely, if they vote for an ingénue instead.
The ingénue is a powerful concept in Hollywood and the Academy likes awarding young up-and-comers as much as they like to reward a performer’s body of work. The power of the ingénue is why Viola Davis’ team chose to campaign for her in Best Supporting Actress rather than Best Actress because it seemed nothing could stop, and nothing did stop Emma Stone from claiming Best Actress for La La Land. This year, critics, pundits, and prognosticators have fawned over Mikey Madison for her powerhouse of a performance in Anora. She owns our attention from her first scene to her last and while the first awards bodies of the season are a mixed bag of winners, it’s very likely Madison will be raking in her share of the hardware and very likely the coveted Oscar.
So, while a historic nomination may be in the air for Karla Sofía Gascón, it’s likely that her nomination will not lead to a win. The way this field has been left wide open it could be the ingénue (Mikey Madison), the comeback (Angelina Jolie), the double threat (Cynthia Erivo), or the legacies (Demi Moore, Marianne Jean-Baptiste) that take home the Oscar.
