Why people claim Kieran Culkin, Zoe Saldaña and Ariana Grande’s nominations are ‘category fraud’

Among the many controversies of this year’s Oscars race, many believe that favourites to take home the acting awards have been recognised in the wrong category.

This year’s race to the Oscars has been shockingly chaotic and vitriolic, with one actor’s history of bigoted social media posts and two directors’ use of AI being revealed, and plenty of gossip about who is behind all this revealing. Another contentious topic has been “category fraud” – that is, the phenomenon of actors being nominated in categories where many believe they don’t really belong. “Absolute category fraud” said one X user, of Kieran Culkin’s best supporting actor nod for A Real Pain. “It’s time to stop the category fraud madness,” said another, referring to both Culkin and Zoe Saldaña’s supporting actress nomination for Emilia Pérez. And there are many more posts like these. Kyle Wilson said in a piece for The Ringer in November that this was poised to be “the fraudiest awards season in Oscar history”.

Still, we shouldn’t get carried away. No one is accusing anyone else of committing actual fraud. The practice they’re talking about is simply a long-established way of boosting actors’ chances of winning an Academy Award (or a Bafta or a Golden Globe), by placing one co-lead in a lead acting category and the other into the supporting, rather than have them compete against each other. Nate Jones in Vulture has called it an “understandable bit of gamesmanship”. But Michael Schulman, the author of Oscar Wars: A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat and Tears, tells the BBC that “category fraud is particularly egregious this year”.

The films being criticised are the aforementioned Emilia Pérez and A Real Pain, plus Wicked, all of which are on the shortlist for Best picture. All three films are dominated by pairs of actors of the same gender who have almost equal amounts to do, rather than playing lead roles and supporting roles. For instance, when Wicked was a Broadway show, the actresses playing Elphaba and Galinda, Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth, were both nominated for the Tony award for Best actress in a musical, so it would seem logical that the actresses playing Elphaba and Galinda in the big-screen adaptation, Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, should both be in the running for best actress prizes. But that’s not what has happened. At the Oscars and the Baftas, Erivo has been nominated as a lead actress, and Grande as a supporting actress.

Some say the categories occupied by the two stars of Emilia Pérez are even more questionable. The film divides its time between characters played by Saldaña and Karla Sofia Gascón – and according to Matthew Stewart, who has crunched the numbers for Screen Time Central, Saldaña is on screen and/or on the soundtrack for 57 minutes and 50 seconds, or 43.69% of the film, which is slightly more than Gascón’s 52 minutes and 21 seconds, or 39.54%. And yet it is Gascón who has been nominated for a lead actress Oscar and Bafta, and Saldaña who is on the “supporting” shortlist.

But the alleged “category fraud” that is really getting film journalists and social-media commentators hot under the collar pertains to Culkin in A Real Pain. Stewart has calculated that the film’s writer/director, Jesse Eisenberg has more screen time (62 minutes and 29 seconds) than Culkin does (58 minutes and six seconds), but the film is obviously about the relationship between two cousins who are almost always on screen together. They are as much co-leads as Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon were in Thelma & Louise – and yet while Davis and Sarandon were both shortlisted for best actress Oscars in 1992, Culkin has been nominated as best supporting actor at the Oscars and the Baftas alike. Last year, Culkin took home the Golden Globe for Best performance by a male actor in a television series – drama for his portrayal of Succession‘s Roman Roy – he was up against his onscreen brother Jeremy Strong in the same category.

“There are no official rules delineating a lead versus supporting performance, and Academy members can vote however they want,” says Schulman. “In practice, though, the actors and the studios choose how to position the cast, through ‘For Your Consideration’ ads and the like. The positioning is often strategic, so that two co-stars aren’t splitting the vote, or so a semi-lead can cannonball into the supporting race.” It’s worth recalling that neither Davis nor Sarandon won an Oscar for Thelma & Louise, so the fact that they were up against each other may indeed have split the vote. In contrast, Saldaña and Grande have been put into different categories from their co-stars, and they are the current top two favourites to win the best supporting actress prize. Meanwhile, Culkin – “a semi-lead”, to use Schulman’s phrase – is a dead cert to win an Academy Award for best supporting actor. If he had been on the leading actor list, up against Adrien Brody, Timothée Chalamet and Ralph Fiennes, his chances of taking home a statuette would have been a lot smaller. The BBC contacted both the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and Bafta regarding the issue of “category fraud”, as well representatives of the three films in question, Emilia Pérez, A Real Pain and Wicked, but all of them are yet to respond.

Some commentators see “category fraud” as out-and-out cheating: the equivalent of entering a Great Dane in a contest to find the world’s biggest Chihuahua. But is it really so insidious? Charles Gant, the awards editor of Screen International, admits that he has “sympathy” for studios that push actors towards one category or another. “Why wouldn’t Universal, Netflix and Searchlight Pictures try to split their actors into leading and supporting categories,” he asks. “Anybody would.” He also notes that Ampas in the US and Bafta in the UK: “are not obliged to play ball” – just because a studio advertises someone as a leading or supporting performer doesn’t mean that voters have to agree.

The most bizarre instance of voters going their own way came in 2021, when Daniel Kaluuya and LaKeith Stanfield were co-leads in Judas and the Black Messiah. Stanfield was marketed as the lead, and Kaluuya as a supporting actor, and yet, somehow, both men ended up being Oscar-nominated for best supporting actor. In this instance, the two competing nominations didn’t split the vote, and Kaluuya won the Academy Award – but who exactly either performer was meant to be supporting was never explained.

The trouble stems from how difficult it is to say what constitutes a “supporting” role. “The word ‘supporting’ often feels inadequate to define a performance,” says Rich Cline, the chair of the London Film Critics’ Circle, “so it’s used across a very wide range, from ensemble casts to people who are onscreen throughout a film, like Ariana Grande in Wicked, to someone who comes on briefly and delivers a devastating moment, like Isabella Rossellini in Conclave.”

Some journalists argue that timings should be involved – eg, an actor should have to appear in more than half of a film to be its lead, and less than half of a film to be a supporting player. Others maintain that the distinction between categories depends on more subtle and artistic factors, such as which character evolves the most during the narrative, and whose perspective is prioritised. “Grande, Saldaña and Culkin are all in movies that centre on a pair of characters who share more or less equal screen time,” says Schulman, “but the protagonists of their films – the ones who go through the pivotal emotional journey – are played by Erivo, Gascón, and Eisenberg. Can you really decide who a story is about by using a stopwatch?”

Cline, too, has come around to the view that A Real Pain is “told specifically through the perspective of Eisenberg’s character”, and so it is legitimate to count Culkin as a supporting actor. He feels the same about Saldaña’s Rita and Gascón’s Emilia in Emilia Pérez. “Personally, while I was watching the film, I felt that it was Rita’s story, with Saldaña giving the lead performance. Then Netflix quickly defined the title role as the lead role in all of their marketing. I can see that, too, as Emilia’s journey is so momentous, driving the entire narrative, including Rita’s arc. So in my voting this season, I have gone along with those categories.”

Considering what a subjective business this is, you could just ignore “category fraud” and declare that all’s fair in love and the Oscars. But, as Schulman says, putting Saldaña, Grande and Culkin in the supporting categories comes “at the expense of actors like Isabella Rossellini [in Conclave] and Yura Borisov [in Anora], who have what I think of as exemplary supporting roles: they’re on screen for a limited time but make an indelible mark”. As excellent as Rossellini and Borisov are, how are actors with genuine supporting roles meant to compete with those who can show off their skills through the whole of a film? It definitely feels as if the supposedly-supporting-but-actually-lead-actors have an unfair advantage. Just think of Viola Davis, who won the Best supporting actress Oscar for her role in Fences in 2017, beating competitors with much less screen time including Naomie Harris (Moonlight) and Michelle Williams (Manchester by the Sea). “Was Davis really a supporting character?” asks Schulman. “Arguably, but she won the Lead actress Tony Award for playing the same role on Broadway.”

Another eyebrow-raising example is Mahershala Ali’s best supporting actor Oscar in 2019, when he was really Viggo Mortensen’s co-lead in Green Book (Mortensen was nominated for best actor). And in 2016, Rooney Mara was Cate Blanchett’s co-lead in Carol (and she had more screen time), while Alicia Vikander was Eddie Redmayne’s co-lead in The Danish Girl – but both Mara and Vikander were nominated for best supporting actress, and Vikander won the Oscar.

Weirder still are the examples where it’s not just a case of co-leads being separated into discrete categories, but lead and supporting actors swapping places. It’s Emma Stone’s character who goes on the most significant journey in The Favourite, but she and Rachel Weisz were both classed as supporting actors – neither won – leaving the way clear for Olivia Colman to win the Oscar for Lead actress in 2019. And spare a thought for Al Pacino, the star of The Godfather. In 1973, Pacino’s Hollywood career was just getting started, while Marlon Brando, in a smaller role, was an icon making a thrilling comeback, so Brando was unjustly placed in the lead actor category, and Pacino had to make do with a supporting actor nod, alongside two of his colleagues from the same film, James Caan and Robert Duvall. With the vote split between the three younger men, it was hardly surprising that none of them won – Joel Grey nabbed the Best supporting actor Oscar for Cabaret. Brando, on the other hand, won Best actor, and Pacino had to wait another 20 years before he finally got his own Oscar for Scent of a Woman.

There are even cases when studios play around with categories in order to stop actors and actresses competing with themselves. In 2009, Kate Winslet had leading roles in two films from different studios, Revolutionary Road and The Reader – but was suggested in “For Your Consideration” ads as a leading actress for the former, and a supporting actress for the latter. However as Gant notes, while the Golden Globes played ball and “nominated her as supporting actress in a drama for The Reader, and leading actress in a drama for Revolutionary Road – handing her both prizes on the night – gratifyingly, Bafta and Oscar rebelled. Both said that she had a lead role in The Reader, and nominated her as such. She won leading actress for The Reader at both events”.

Is “category fraud” a slight against under-appreciated character actors giving incontrovertibly supporting performances or just a harmless sign of how arbitrary the Oscars can be? Your answer may depend on how much of a fan you are of the nominees in question. One common theme on social media is that Culkin’s nomination may be in the wrong category, but that he’s so terrific in A Real Pain that it’s hard to begrudge him his inevitable Oscar. Others take a harder line: “Guy Pearce I’m so sorry that category fraud is about to rob you of your Oscar,” said one X user, referring to Pearce’s best supporting actor nomination for The Brutalist. As for the performers who are up against Grande, Saldaña and Culkin, they’re sure to smile and applaud the winners on Oscar night, but, deep down, they may wish that the Academy had issued voters with stopwatches, after all.