Selena Gomez has faced criticism for her role as Jessi in Emilia Pérez (Image: Shanna Besson/PAGE 114/Why Not Productions/Pathe Films/France 2 Cinema)
It’s no secret that Tinseltown has always been cutthroat. “Hollywood is the only place in the world where a man gets stabbed in the back while climbing a ladder,” said literary giant and sometime screenwriter William Faulkner.
But the Academy Awards, now in their 97th year, are supposedly a glittering event where Hollywood sets aside its stiletto daggers to celebrate its finest. “It’s an honour just to be nominated,” is the perennial mantra echoed by stars through gritted teeth.
Yet the rules of engagement have changed. An Oscar nomination this year is akin to being hoisted as a target in a shooting gallery. Best Picture contenders Emilia Perez, The Brutalist, Anora, A Complete Unknown, Conclave, Wicked and The Substance have all been attacked, while this year’s Oscars have become a battleground for verbal grenade-throwing and behind-the-scenes black ops.
More controversies besiege this year’s nominees than ever before, threatening to wreck their chances of snaring a golden statuette. A month away from the March 2 ceremony, the rumblings are already reaching epic proportions. So much so that previous stumbles and spats – think Will Smith slapping Chris Rock in 2022, or Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty accidentally announcing La La Land as the Best Picture winner in 2017 (in fact, Moonlight had won) – could be thrown entirely into the shade.
At stake are the millions in boosted box office revenue that an Oscar win can bring, as well as that career-defining prestige.
“Winning awards has become the guiding principle of our industry, and it’s what’s destroying it,” said top Hollywood publicist Amanda Lundberg. War rooms, opposition propaganda dumps and eight-figure campaign budgets hide behind many movies’ sometimes nefarious Oscar campaigns.
Cynthia Erivo, left, and Ariana Grande, right, in a scene from the Wicked film (Image: AP)
Many of the attacks appear to surface organically from social media, yet are strategically amplified by clandestine Oscar campaigns run by high-powered strategists targeting rivals, aiming to sway the nearly 10,000 Academy voters.
“They try to change someone else’s narrative by adding dirt to the layer,” says veteran Oscars strategist Tony Angellotti. This year’s Best Picture contenders have been hit harder than ever, as the whisper campaigns that were rare two decades ago have become a Handel’s Messiah chorus of accusations.
Emilia Perez, the acclaimed narco-trans musical that leads the awards race with 13 Oscar nominations, including the first for its trans best actress nominee Karla Sofía Gascón, has drawn the most fire.
It has been criticised for mangling the Spanish language; depicting Mexicans as gangsters and corrupt politicians; being filmed by French director Jacques Audiard with no Mexican leads and few Mexican crew members; trivialising the transsexual community; and suggesting few Mexicans had thought of searching for the “desaparecidos” – political opponents who vanished.Gascón blamed the smears on “people working with” fellow nominee Fernanda Torres, star of Best Picture rival I’m Still Here. As if in response, racist and Islamophobic old social media posts by Gascón suspiciously resurfaced yesterday to further undermine her chances.
Selena Gomez, who despite her heritage is not a Spanish speaker, was savaged for butchering the language as a cartel kingpin’s wife. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying,” complained actor Eugenio Derbez. “How weird the director doesn’t speak English or Spanish and the movie is in Spanish and English, and it takes place in Mexico and you don’t understand the culture.”
Gomez apologised: “I’m sorry. I did the best I could.” Trans critics also attacked the film’s “inauthentic portrayal of trans people” as “offensive and dangerous”, with LGBTQ+ group GLAAD also branding it “a step backward for trans representation.” Complaints mounted when it was revealed that artificial intelligence had been used to enhance Gascón’s singing voice.
Will Smith’s slap of 2022 Oscars host Chris Rock remains one of the Academy’s most shocking moments (Image: AFP via Getty Images)
The same attack was launched against Adrien Brody, front-runner for Best Actor in The Brutalist. It transpires AI was used to perfect his Hungarian accent in the drama about a fictive Jewish architect fleeing the Holocaust. It sparked calls for Brody’s elimination from contention.
Hollywood insiders are deeply suspicious. Asked one: “Who benefits from attacking Brody’s accent, unless it’s another Oscar contender?” Darkly humorous drama Anora, about a Russian oligarch’s son who marries an exotic dancer and part-time hooker, became a political football after Russian actor Yura Borisov earned a Best Supporting Actor nod for playing compassionate henchman Igor. Borisov has been a vocal supporter of Vladimir Putin, provoking an angry backlash over the fact he could win an Oscar, with war in Ukraine still raging.
Timothée Chalamet’s Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, meanwhile, came under fire for its multiple factual inaccuracies. Many of its most powerful scenes were pure fiction. Dylan never sang at the hospital sickbed of folk legend Woody Guthrie.
The film’s emotional climax, when Dylan’s girlfriend Suze Rotolo – renamed Sylvia Russo in the film – watches him singing at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival and realises he loves Joan Baez, never happened: Rotolo wasn’t there, as they split up long before.
And Dylan being jeered and branded a “Judas” in the movie by an irate audience member for playing an electric guitar at the same festival, in reality took place 10 months later in Manchester, England.
When it comes to attacks, no film is sacred.
Conclave, the drama exploring the scandals and power struggles behind the Vatican’s college of cardinals electing a new pope, starring Ralph Fiennes, has been branded a “blasphemous film, which completely misaligns with our values and mocks the Church”, according to critics on Catholic social media website Missio Dei.
Even frothy musical Wicked sparked controversy before it opened, after its star Cynthia Erivo angrily criticised a fan’s redesign of the film’s promotional poster. The movie ignited further strife when anti-woke warriors raged against the British Board of Film Censors noting that Wicked depicted “discrimination” against people of green skin and in wheelchairs.
“Seeing beloved characters being mistreated, especially when Elphaba’s skin colour is used to demonise her as the ‘Wicked Witch’, may be upsetting and poignant for some audiences,” the censorship board said.
Elle Fanning, left, and Timothee Chalamet in A Complete Unknown (Image: AP)
And the hits kept coming. Openly bisexual black British actress Erivo’s casting was attributed to Hollywood “wokeness” and critics complained that the Munchkins were depicted by average-sized actors rather than dwarves as in the original Wizard of Oz movie.
Even body horror drama The Substance, vying for Best Picture and landing Demi Moore her first Oscar nod, has beenaccused of pandering to the male gaze and endorsing ageism by portraying older women as monsters.
“Is The Substance brilliant feminist critique or a soulless mess?” asked one critic.
This banner year for Oscar in-fighting follows decades of slowly mounting Hollywood black ops. Convicted sex offender and former Miramax studio chief Harvey Weinstein was widely rumoured to be behind whisper campaigns attacking rival movies, ever since a multi-million-dollar promotional campaign saw his Shakespeare In Love beat Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan for the 1999 Best Picture: possibly the most controversial Oscar victory ever. “Harvey wanted to win, and kill everything else,” said Spielberg’s ex-marketing chief Terry Press. Zero Dark Thirty in 2012, about the hunt for Osama Bin Laden, was badly shaken when accused of justifying torture. That same year Lincoln, starring Daniel Day-Lewis, was rebuked for distorting history.
Tom Hanks’s 2013 drama Captain Phillips, about a cargo ship hijacked by Somali pirates, was dealt a blow during Oscar season when the ship’s actual crew claimed that Phillips had not been so selfless or heroic in real life, and had put his vessel in danger.
British actress Andrea Riseborough was targeted for attack after being nominated for Best Actress in 2023 for little-seen indie movie To Leslie. She was investigated by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences when it emerged several high-profile stars, including Jane Fonda, Kate Winslet, Susan Sarandon, Demi Moore and Cate Blanchett, had campaigned for her nomination using similar wording, as if part of an orchestrated marketing push – forbidden under Academy rules. Her nomination was allowed to stand, but the damage was done.
Actor Adrien Brody controversially used AI to perfect his Hungarian accent in The Brutalist (Image: -)
Yet Oscar black ops campaigns are not always fatal.
A Beautiful Mind in 2001 was accused of white-washing mathematician John Nash by avoiding allegations he was homosexual and anti-Semitic; Slumdog Millionaire was slammed for egregiously under-paying its young Indian stars in 2008; and The Hurt Locker was attacked the following year for its inaccurate depiction of bomb disposal – yet all three went on to win Best Picture.
With so much at stake in a relentlessly unscrupulous Hollywood, perhaps the use of such dirty tricks should not be surprising.
“People are desperate to win awards,” Hollywood publicist Lundberg told The New York Times. “And we’ve guided it here because we’ve rewarded it with moneyand prestige.
“So what happens when people want something that’s limited? Do the math. It causes all sorts of behaviour, and people lose where the line is.”
In case any movie-makers haveforgotten, she added: “This is not the Nobel Peace Prize.”
In Hollywood, some might credibly argue that the Oscars are even more important than that.