What Does the SAG Ensemble Award Say About the Best Picture Race?
The simple justification by awards prognosticators for the importance of the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture is that the Actors Branch is the biggest voting bloc within the Academy, so the winner is a bellwether for film will ultimately win Best Picture. That said, looking at what titles have actually won the award in recent years — an award with different criteria than the Academy Awards’ Best Picture — the results tell a different story.
In fact, it was two years into the SAG Awards’ existence until there were more than two titles that overlapped between Best Ensemble nominees and nominees for the Best Picture Oscar and — almost shockingly — SAG was the one major awards body to not award “Titanic,” the biggest film of all time, back in 1998. Overall, the first decade of the award ceremony’s history shows little overlap with the Oscars in terms of the biggest award they both hand out. But, quite notably, in the years in which they did see eye to eye, are often the years that saw some of the most surprising Best Picture wins.
In hindsight, films like “Shakespeare in Love” and “Crash” winning the SAG Award for Best Ensemble actually heralded important turning points that should have let prognosticators know the tides had turned for early favorites like “Saving Private Ryan” or “Brokeback Mountain.”
Post-“Crash,” the SAG Award for Best Ensemble did become a better indicator for what film will win Best Picture at the Academy Awards. The years where the awards don’t overlap, like when “Inglourious Basterds” won over “The Hurt Locker” in 2010, “The Help” won over “The Artist” in 2012, or “American Hustle” won over “12 Years a Slave” in 2014, there are easy justifications to be made, like SAG voters being drawn to starrier projects that are more “accessible” or offer a better showcase of their casts.
The cast of ‘Hidden Figures’ accept the Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture onstage at The 23rd Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images
2017 is where the winners of the SAG Award for Best Ensemble take a turn. Thinking about 2016 as a film year, there is an overlap in conversation during awards season about what art to platform in the wake of Donald Trump becoming president, and how to prevent another #OscarsSoWhite situation from happening like it had with the acting categories in the previous two years. Coincidentally, by merit as much as by thoughts of social change, both awards bodies gave their highest honor to a film led by a Black cast. Again, the difference between SAG going for “Hidden Figures” and the Oscars going for “Moonlight” could be chalked up to Screen Actors Guild members voting for the film that had more actors held in higher esteem at the time. “Moonlight” is still the lowest-budgeted Best Picture winner.
But look at the Best Ensemble winners year after year after that, and the SAG Award begins to take on a more political tinge. Wins for “Black Panther” and “Parasite” speak to the continued push to center more films about marginalized communities, and highlight more non-English speaking acting performances (though “Parasite” won Best Picture, it was shut out of the acting categories). Wins for “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” and “The Trial of the Chicago 7” align with more post-election conversations about racial relations in America and criminal justice reform.
If anything, this year’s win for “CODA,” a family film starring mostly deaf actors, falls into the trend of awarding work that provides representation wins, but it also got right back to why prognosticators began paying attention to the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture in the first place. Should a film like “Everything Everywhere All at Once” or “Women Talking” triumph over an assumed Best Picture frontrunner like Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans” at the SAG Awards, a Best Picture win can’t be a surprise. Savvy prognosticators will indeed see it coming, knowing the history between the awards bodies.
SAG Awards nomination voting is currently open until January 8 at 5 p.m. PT. The 2023 SAG Awards nominations will be announced on January 11, with final voting opening on January 18, and closing on February 24 at noon PT. The 29th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards will take place on Sunday, February 26 in Los Angeles.