Among the many controversies of this year's Oscars race, many believe that favourites to take home the acting awards have been recognised in the wrong category.
This year's race to the Oscars has been shockingly chaotic and vitriolic, with one actor's history of bigoted social media posts and two directors' use of Al being revealed, and plenty of gossip about who is behind all this revealing. Another contentious topic has been "category fraud" - that is, the phenomenon of actors being nominated in categories where many believe they don't really belong. "Absolute category fraud" said one X user, of Kieran Culkin's best supporting actor nod for A Real Pain. "It's time to stop the category fraud madness," said another, referring to both Culkin and Zoe Saldaña's supporting actress nomination for Emilia Pérez. And there are many more posts like these. Kyle Wilson said in a piece for The Ringer in November that this was poised to be "the fraudiest awards season in Oscar history".
Still, we shouldn't get carried away. No one is accusing anyone else of committing actual fraud. The practice they're talking about is simply a long-established way of boosting actors' chances of winning an Academy Award (or a Bafta or a Golden Globe), by placing one co-lead in a lead acting category and the other into the supporting, rather than have them compete against each other. Nate Jones in Vulture has called it an "understandable bit of gamesmanship". But Michael Schulman, the author of Oscar Wars: A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat and Tears, tells the BBC that "category fraud is particularly egregious this year".
The films being criticised are the aforementioned Emilia Pérez and A Real Pain, plus Wicked, all of which are on the shortlist for Best picture. All three films are dominated by pairs of actors of the same gender who have almost equal amounts to do, rather than playing lead roles and supporting roles. For instance, when Wicked was a Broadway show, the actresses playing Elphaba and Galinda, Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth, were both nominated for the Tony award for Best actress in a musical, so it would seem logical that the actresses playing Elphaba and Galinda in the big-screen adaptation, Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, should both be in the running for best actress prizes. But that's not what has happened. At the Oscars and the Baftas, Erivo has been nominated as a lead actress, and Grande as a supporting actress.
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