Jake Coyle
AP – The 28th Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards will kick off with a Hamilton reunion, feature a lifetime achievement award for Helen Mirren and, maybe, supply a preview of the upcoming Academy Awards.
After the January Golden Globes were a non-event, the SAG Awards will be Hollywood’s first major, televised, in-person award show – complete with a red carpet and teary-eyed speeches – this year.
While the Academy Awards aren’t mandating vaccination for presenters (just attendees), it’s required for the SAG Awards, which are voted on by the Hollywood actors’ guild SAG-AFTRA. One actor in the cast of the Paramount series Yellowstone, Forrie J Smith, has said he won’t attend because he isn’t vaccinated.
Hamilton trio Lin-Manuel Miranda, Leslie Odom Jr and Daveed Diggs will open the ceremony. Kate Winslet is to present the actors’ lifetime achievement award to Mirren, a five-time SAG Award winner.
A starry group of nominees – including Will Smith, Lady Gaga, Denzel Washington, Nicole Kidman and Ben Affleck – will make sure the SAG Award don’t lack for glamour.
Five films are nominated for the SAG Awards’ top honour, best ensemble: Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast, Sian Heder’s coming-of-age drama CODA, Adam McKay’s apocalypse comedy Don’t Look Up, Ridley Scott’s high-camp House of Gucci and Reinaldo Marcus Green’s family tennis drama King Richard.
The leading Oscar nominee, Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog, failed to land a best ensemble nominations but three of its actors – Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst and Kodi Smit-McPhee – are up for individual awards.
Winning best ensemble doesn’t automatically make a movie the Oscar favourite, but actors hold the largest sway because they constitute the largest percentage of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.
