HEATING UP

Best Actor Oscar Race Thrown Into Chaos by Shocking Upset

“I wasn’t expecting this at all,” said the stunned winner Sunday night.

The race for Best Actor is more uncertain than ever after Sunday night’s shakeup at the Actor Awards.

The awards show, formerly known as the SAG Awards, presented Sinners star Michael B. Jordan with the prize for Best Actor. He was up against Timothée Chalamet for Marty Supreme, Leonardo DiCaprio for One Battle After Another, Ethan Hawke for Blue Moon, and Jesse Plemons for Bugonia.

Chalamet, the only actor in the running who had won major precursor awards at both the Critics’ Choice and Golden Globes, had previously been considered the frontrunner for the Academy Award.

“I wasn’t expecting this at all,” Jordan said from the awards stage.

Neither did most people. Before his big win Sunday night, Polymarket had Jordan’s Oscar odds at just 6.9 percent. Now, he’s rocketed to second place at 37 percent, behind Chalamet at 51 percent. DiCaprio, Hawke, and The Secret Agent‘s Wagner Moura are all far below in the single digits.

Gamblers previously had Chalamet at 79 percent odds of winning the Best Actor Oscar, but Jordan’s Sunday win, as well as Chalamet’s loss to the virtually unknown I Swear star Robert Aramayo at the BAFTAs last weekend, have made his Oscars chances far less certain.

Some betters are eyeing Brazilian actor Moura as a long-shot winner, especially as he could receive a push similar to last year’s Brazilian Best International Film winner, I’m Still Here.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another remains the strong favorite to win Best Picture at the Oscars after picking up the Producers Guild Awards’ top prize on Saturday night. But Sinners is giving it a run for its money after ending the Actor Awards by winning Best Ensemble over the casts of Frankenstein, Hamnet, Marty Supreme, and One Battle.

Jordan, who played both main characters, Smoke and Stack, in Coogler’s vampire drama about racial violence in 1930s Clarksdale, Mississippi, previously helped Coogler’s Black Panther win that same award in 2019. The win made history for Coogler, who became the first director to ever helm two Best Ensemble winners at SAG.

In his acceptance speech for Best Actor, Jordan reflected on his earliest days as an actor, and how the actors’ union “was this club I wanted to be in so bad.” He broke out as a teen, appearing in The Wire, All My Children, and Friday Night Lights.

“I remember watching all the other actors that I looked up to being a part of that club, being a part of SAG-AFTRA, being a part of this community,” he said from the stage. “I was like, ‘Man, I want to be [in] that one day.’ Those guys on stage with the awards and nice suits… that’s what I always wanted,” he told the audience. “That kid from North Jersey is standing here right now.”

He thanked his mother, Donna Jordan, who was in attendance, for “driving me back and forth to New York when we didn’t have enough money to go through the Holland Tunnel; when we were looking for gas money, parking spaces, when I went out there for auditions.”

He ended his remarks, “I’m so honored and privileged to be nominated in categories with people, actors, and humans that I love,” Jordan said. “I love their work and what you contribute to our craft. This ride has been unbelievable. So thank you for welcoming me in and making me feel seen.”

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Eboni Boykin-PattersonEntertainment Reporter

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