This year’s Academy Awards will be introducing a bran new category. Achievement in Casting will honor the hard work of casting directors when deciding who should star in their films. For the first ever Achievement in Casting award, we have five nominees: Nina Gold for Hamnet, Jennifer Venditti for Marty Supreme, Gabriel Domingues for The Secret Agent, Francine Maisler for Sinners and Cassandra Kulukundis for One Battle After Another. An interesting but unsurprising trend with these nominations is that each of these films received acting nominations as well. Jessie Buckley (Hamnet) is nominated for Best Actress, and Timothée Chalamet (Marty Supreme) and Wagner Moura (The Secret Agent) both received nominations for Best Actor.
As for Sinners and One Battle After Another, both films received multiple acting nominations. Michael B. Jordan is in the Best Actor category, with Delroy Lindo and Wunmi Musaku being nominated in the Best Supporting Actor and Supporting Actress categories respectively. Wunmi Musaku, who just received her first Oscar nomination, explained how he never imagined being nominated for awards when she took the role. She said, “I say this with all sincerity. I have never thought about award season when taking a role. But I just knew from the people I met on that journey that the role would change me. From the moment I met Ryan, and we had our first conversation on Zoom, I was like, even if I don’t get this role, this hour and a half I spent talking to him, I feel changed. And I just felt from the get-go that this was going to be a moment of change for me personally, where I was in my journey, and it felt profound. I was offered the job in the room with Michael after my chemistry read with him. Everything about filming has just felt magical; every weekend on that set in New Orleans felt magical.”
One Battle After Another had four acting nominations, with Leonardo DiCaprio leading the pack in the Best Actor category. Past him, Sean Penn and Benecio Del Toro were both nominated for Best Supporting Actor, and Teyana Taylor was placed in Best Supporting Actress.
The Achievement in Casting category is still very new, so it will be interesting to see if it starts a trend of nominating the films with acting nominations. All the Oscar nominations have now been announced, and the ceremony takes place on Sunday, March 15. See the full list of nominees here.
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