Oscars Deep Dive: Who’s Winning This Year’s Wild Supporting Races?

It’s easy to get bored in awards season. Thankfully, we have two of the most interesting acting races in years.

Each week, Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress get increasingly complicated, making me constantly change my still-unsettled predictions. I could argue that four of the five women, and any of the five men, will win their categories.

So I’m going to dive deep into what’s making these races so complicated, what the numbers tell us and where things are headed.

As if anyone knows at this point.

Before we get started, be sure to follow me on my socials for the latest awards season coverage.

The Supporting races so far

TheWrap’s Awards Tracker makes its predictions for actors based off of four ceremonies: the Actor Awards, the BAFTAs, the Golden Globes and the Critics Choice Awards.

And so far, none of them can agree.

At the Critics Choice Awards, Jacob Elordi and Amy Madigan became the first big winners of the season. Then came the Golden Globes, which anointed Stellan Skarsgård and Teyana Taylor. Next we have the BAFTAs, where Sean Penn and Wunmi Mosaku came out on top. 

With only the Actor Awards left between now and the Oscars, that’s six winners and no consensus.

This is a massive change from the supporting races of the past few years. The last two Supporting Actress seasons were a clean sweep, with Zoe Saldañaand Da’Vine Joy Randolph both picking up all four precursor awards. Two years before that, Ariana DeBose did the same, as did Laura Dern in 2020, Allison Janney in 2018 and Viola Davis in 2017.

Supporting Actor has been even more predictable, with six of the last eight winners picking up all four major trophies on the road to the Academy Awards. The only two who didn’t were Ke Huy Quan, who only missed at the BAFTAs, and Troy Kotsur, who only missed at the Globes. We had some good winners in that eight-year stretch, but some pretty boring races.

So whose win gives them the biggest push?

What wins weigh the most?

This century, the Supporting Actor who wins at the Golden Globes has the best odds, with 77% of them making it all the way to the Oscars. This includes seven of the last eight Academy Awards winners, with only Troy Kotsur (“CODA”) missing the Globe (which went to Kodi Smit-McPhee for “The Power of the Dog”).

The Actor Awards come in just behind the Globes, with 73% of Supporting Actor winners this century going on to win the Oscar. Critics Choice follows with 69%, trailed by the BAFTAs with a 62% correlation

Over in Supporting Actress, the Actor Awards mean the most by far, with 81% of their winners getting the gold at the Oscars. Since 2010, only Regina King (“If Beale Street Could Talk”) won a Supporting Actress Oscar without a SAG equivalent (given that year to Emily Blunt for “A Quiet Place”). King won at the Globes and Critics Choice before the Academy Awards, and was not nominated at the BAFTAs.

But the Actor Awards haven’t been given out yet. 73% of Critics Choicewinners got Best Supporting Actress at the Oscars, so they have the second-most crossover. The BAFTAs and Golden Globes trail with 69% and 65% correlation respectively.

On paper, this makes predictions sound relatively simple. Skarsgård won the Globe and Madigan won at Critics Choice, so they sound like the leaders so far, right?

Not quite.

Some critical misses

If you look at TheWrap’s Awards Tracker, you’ll notice that Skarsgård and Madigan sit with pretty low odds — about 4% and 1% respectively. While the wins they’ve gotten matter, the nominations they’ve missed matter too.

Despite winning the Globe, Skarsgård failed to get a nomination at the Actor Awards, finding himself among a total shutout of all foreign-language performances. Only two men this century have won Best Supporting Actor at the Oscars without a nomination from SAG to match. The most recent was Christoph Waltz, who picked up the Academy Award for “Django Unchained” (Waltz also won the BAFTA and Globe but missed a nomination with the critics). 

The other was Skarsgård’s fellow nominee Benicio del Toro, who won the Oscar in 2001 for “Traffic” — though, his SAG miss is really just a technicality. Del Toro won the Actor for “Traffic” in the Leading Role division, with BAFTA and Globes wins to match.

Madigan finds herself in a similar situation after missing a BAFTAnomination. There are six supporting actresses who won since 2000 despite the BAFTA snub — but they all differ from Madigan in key ways.

Four of them (Angelina Jolie in “Girl, Interrupted,” Rachel Weisz in “The Constant Gardner,” Melissa Leo in “The Fighter” and Regina King in “If Beale Street Could Talk”) won the Globe where Madigan did not. Two (Weisz and Alicia Vikander in “The Danish Girl”) got lead nominations at the BAFTAs like del Toro.

This only leaves Marcia Gay Harden, who went on a miraculous run in 2001 where she won the Oscar despite missing nominations at the Actor Awards, BAFTAs, Globes and Critics Choice (with each of her fellow Oscar nominees getting one of those four awards). We’ve talked about that crazy story before, and we’ll get back to it again shortly.

And the Oscars go to…?

So, when it comes down to it, who should you predict in the supporting categories?

According to the Awards Tracker, Jacob Elrodi leads the pack with a 33.33% chance of winning, followed by Sean Penn with a 20% chance. Elordi’s top spot makes sense, as Critics Choice has become a powerful indicator for Supporting Actor — it’s an award Elordi has in common with the last nine Oscar winners. 

However, the only time somebody won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar with only a Critics Choice Award under their belt was 1996, when Kevin Spacey won for “The Usual Suspects” but lost at the Globes and SAG Awards (and didn’t get the BAFTA nod).

That was also a weird case where, in the Critics Choice Awards’ first year, they gave Spacey his win collectively for “The Usual Suspects,” “Outbreak,” “Seven” and “Swimming with Sharks” — and he tied Ed Harris for “Apollo 13,” “Just Cause” and “Nixon.” So that’s one category split amongst seven movies, I guess.

Wunmi Mosaku sits atop Best Supporting Actress on the Awards Tracker, with a 77.27% chance to Teyana Taylor’s 25%. Part of this incredibly high number for Mosaku stems from the fact that she’s had a rare season for this category: she got the BAFTA win, missed the Globes nomination and hasn’t won anything else yet. 

Mosaku’s story closely resembles Youn Yuh-jung’s season for “Minari.” But Youn went on to win at the SAG Awards — something that may be crucial to Mosaku, Elordi and any of the other contenders in the season’s final stretch. Winning the Actor on Sunday would boost Mosaku and Elordi’s odds to near 100%, and give any of the other nominees a much-needed push.

But the Actor Awards could also make things more chaotic. Wins for Miles Caton, Paul Mescal, Odessa A’zion and Ariana Grande (none of whom are Oscar nominees) would only throw things into further disarray. That could be fun!

An Actor for Benicio del Toro, meanwhile, could signal that he’s getting an Oscar — or it could clear the way for Delroy Lindo to have a Marica Gay Harden-like victory with no consensus favorite. 

And while Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas didn’t get a nomination for Sunday’s show, she could weirdly benefit from an A’zion/Grande win further complicating her category. As the only international nominee in Best Supporting Actress, a very large Academy contingent could swoop into a muddled race and bring her the statue.

So all eyes are on the Actor Awards, where we’ll get clarity or chaos one last time. For now, I’m just glad to have two thrilling races — and with 10 excellent performances, to boot.

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