‘To Leslie’ Is a Surprising Sudden Oscar Contender That Deserves All the Praise

Over the last week, you may have seen some of your favorite celebrities plugging a movie you’ve never even heard of with the fervent passion they usually reserve for holiday cards or caffeinated beverages. Stars with huge industry cachet like Jane Fonda, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Sarah Paulson have flocked to social media to buoy To Leslie, a shoestring-budget 2022 film that they believe should be up for consideration among Academy voters ahead of next week’s Oscar nominations. And more than just the movie itself, they’re bandying about its star, Andrea Riseborough.

The film, in which Riseborough plays an alcoholic single mother struggling to put her life together after winning the lottery, earned rave reviews from critics last year. Despite the praise, it earned a paltry box office total of less than $30,000 worldwide, and had all but faded from the conversation following its March 2022 release.

And now, nearly a year later, celebrities are jumping on the bandwagon too. “[I was] bowled over by Andrea Riseborough’s brave and unsparing performance,” Fonda wrote on Instagram. Paltrow and her friend Demi Moore even screened the film together with Riseborough and director Michael Morris in attendance, which they then posted about on their respective Instagram accounts. Naturally, Twitter has taken notice too, memeing Sarah Paulson’s claims that To Leslie is a “small film with a giant heart.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.