This Is the Most Exciting Best Supporting Actress Oscar Race of All Time

It’s kinda boring when there’s a shoo-in for an Oscar and the rest of awards season feels like going through the motions. Luckily—with the exception of Jessie Buckley’s surefire sweep for Best Actress for her role as the bereaved wife of William Shakespeare in Hamnet—that’s far from the case ahead of Sunday’s ceremony.  

Specifically, Best Supporting Actress has been the most surprising category—of any awards show—in recent memory. Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas and Elle Fanning both snuck in for Sentimental Value, Amy Madigan capitalized on the popularity of Weapons as Aunt Gladys, Wunmi Mosaku was recognized for Sinners, and Teyana Taylor for One Battle After Another. And everyone deserves it; anyone could win. If you’re sick of Marty Supreme and Timothee Chalamet, this is your reason to tune in Sunday night. 

Sinners and One Battle After Another have been doing battle in the big categories—Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor—and Taylor was largely assumed to garner her first Oscar nomination (justice for A Thousand and One) for her role as Perfidia Beverly Hills—which she handily secured.

Sinner’s luminous Mosaku was hot on her heels as Hoodoo conjurer Annie, a role that was ignored by some awards bodies (the Golden Globes) but stunningly decorated by others (the notoriously racist BAFTAS honored Mosaku with the mask while simultaneously disrespecting her co-stars, Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo, by airing a racial slur said by attendee and Tourette’s activist John Davidson—and then delaying their apology to the presenters). Mosaku’s surprise win has shaken up the odds. 

In the year of our lord 2026, you wouldn’t think it would be notable that two Black actresses were nominated in the same category—but it’s only happened a handful of times in the 98-year history of the Academy Awards. First, when Oprah Winfrey and Margaret Avery were nominated for The Color Purple in 1986, and most recently in 2023, when Danielle Brooks and winner Da’Vine Joy Randolph were both nominated. In 2017, a whopping three Black actresses were nominated for Best Supporting Actress. The hashtag #OscarsSoWhite goes viral every few years for a reason.

Like Mosaku, Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value was shut out by the newly-renamed Screen Actors Guild Actor Awards, garnering zero nominations, even though each of its main actors—Stellan Skarsgård, Renate Reinsve, Elle Fanning, and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas—all picked up noms from the Academy, including the latter two for Best Supporting Actress. 

This isn’t unheard of: the last time it happened was in 2023, when Jamie Lee Curtis and Stephanie Hsu were both nominated for Everything Everywhere All At Once, a film that certainly falls into the sweep basket. In total, 12 supporting actresses have bested their nominated co-stars.

But the most intriguing nomination may be Madigan in Weapons, for which she’s already won the Critics Choice and Screen Actors’ Guild trophies. Not only does this mark 40 years since her last (and first) nomination, it’s also for a role in a horror film—a genre routinely ignored by the Academy. 

And even with such a stacked category, there were still plenty of snubs. Everyone expected Ariana Grande to nab another nom for reprising the role as Glinda in Wicked: For Good—at least until the movie came out. Wicked was nominated for ten awards in 2025, including Grande for Best Supporting Actress, and won two. For Good got zero noms. Grande would have been only the seventh actor and second woman (the other being the incomparable Cate Blanchett) to be nominated for playing the same character twice, a feat that has never been seen in the Best Supporting Actress category. (Though some might argue the category is a bit fraudulent here anyway, as Grande is a co-lead in For Good). 

Newcomer Odessa A’zion was another contender for Marty Supreme, but with her recent Latina-fishing controversies, it’s probably for the best that she missed out on a nom this year.

Four of the Best Supporting Actress nominees are first-timers, which is refreshing when the category can sometimes feel like a career achievement consolation prize (see Curtis), or when Best Actress tends to be the same crop of rotating thespians—Emma Stone among them this year for her role in Bugonia, edging out perhaps more deserving performances such as Chase Infiniti in One Battle After Another, Amanda Seyfried in The Testament of Ann Lee, or Jennifer Lawrence in Die My Love. (Say what you want about Kate Hudson’s To Leslie-esque eleventh-hour nomination, but at least it’s something different.)

Madigan, as mentioned, is enjoying her second career nomination—but as a character actor who’s spent decades toiling away in lesser-seen projects, her win would feel like the right kind of lifetime acknowledgement. Personally, she’s my pick—though I won’t be mad if Mosaku takes it.

Whereas in other years or other categories, people may bicker about who’s truly deserving, this year’s slate has blessed us with a wealth of performances to choose from. I, for one, think the Academy correctly chose its nominees. No matter who ultimately goes home with the little gold man Sunday night, it will be the right choice. 

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Scarlett Harris is a culture critic and author of A Diva Was a Female Version of a Wrestler: An Abbreviated Herstory of World Wrestling Entertainment. Read her previously published work on her website and through her Substack, The Scarlett Woman. Follow her on Bluesky at @scarletteharris.bsky.social.