The Screen Actors Guild Awards are happening on Sunday. It’ll be the first award show that I’ve watched in a long time. And for the SAG Awards, they’re rarely in this position because, in a typical pre-COVID year, they come after the Golden Globes and the Critics Choice Awards and the Grammys. What’s interestingly different about the SAGs this year is that there are high-profile celebrities nominated who have not been invited to the Oscars – and with all the previous event cancellations that have already happened, it kinda gives them the kind of heat that the Golden Globes used to enjoy with their A List star guest list. Lady Gaga, for example, is a SAG nominee but not an Oscar nominee. Ben Affleck too. Which means that in five days we could be seeing Bennifer on that SAG red carpet.
But will the SAG winners actually have that much of an effect on the Oscar results? In the Best Actor category, the SAG nominees and the Oscar nominees match up exactly: Javier Bardem, Benedict Cumberbatch, Andrew Garfield, Will Smith, and Denzel Washington.
In the Best Actress category, however, it’s three out of five. Instead of Lady Gaga and Jennifer Hudson, the Oscars opted for Penelope Cruz and Kristen Stewart. Which, as I’ve been saying, makes total sense. Penelope is already an Oscar winner and Kristen plays much better with the voters among the acting branch of the Academy. The eventual Best Actress SAG winner will certainly go into the Oscar season as a favourite, but with two of the contenders not represented there, the whole thing is still really unpredictable. Everyone has a shot at it right now as voting hasn’t even started yet.
So let’s talk about Penelope, who is at home in Spain and was promoting her film Official Competition with Antonio Banderas yesterday. Penelope was one of the eight stars featured inVanity Fair’s Hollywood Issue last weekfor her work in佩德罗·阿莫多瓦’sParallel Mothers.
Something jumped out at me when I was reading her profile. The interview took place during the photo shoot and the writer, David Canfield,notes that:
“[Penelope will] soon return home to Madrid, having spent the holidays here in Los Angeles with family.”
Spending the holidays in LA and with their family is of course work-related. And at that time of year, given that both Penelope and Javier have received Oscar nominations, has to at least in part be due to campaigning. But they managed to do it without a lot of in-your-faceness. And they’re heading to the Oscars together where she will undoubtedly be in Chanel, because she’s one of the ambassadors.
She was wearing Chanel in Madrid for her Official Competition appearances, including a black and white dress last night which… this is the thing about Penelope + Chanel – a lot of the time, when she wears it, it never looks like Chanel to me and I can’t say that it’s my favourite celebrity-to-brand collaboration. Margot Robbie + Chanel doesn’t do it for me either.
Also…the bang+bump thing she’s doing with her hair is… not my favourite. Were they fake bangs?! Because you’ll note, she didn’t have them earlier in the day:
