Was Oscar’s ‘Favourite’ Olivia Colman Unbeatable All Along?
Best Actress frontrunner Glenn Close probably never had a chance.
The moral of this particular dose of Oscar reality: You don’t have to be a royal to grab the Academy’s attention, but it sure helps if you’re pretending to be British royalty. All hail the kings and queens (and prime ministers)!
Any Academy Awards buff worth his or her weight in office-pool cash knows the golden-trophy rule: The surest route to Oscar buzz is to keep it real. As 2019 winners Mahershala Ali (Best Supporting Actor for Green Book), Rami Malek (Best Actor for Bohemian Rhapsody), and Olivia Colman (Best Actress for The Favourite) reconfirmed this year, realism gets you more Oscar love if your character was/is a real person.
And judging from its past voting habits, the Academy gives actors bonus points if they’re keeping it real as fierce British rulers. So all of those Oscar prognosticators who thought Best Actress was The Wife’s Glenn Close to lose probably should have seen an upset coming, courtesy of Colman as the 18th-century British monarch Queen Anne (1702–1707). In the nine decades of Oscars, 19 acting nominations and six wins now have gone to performers for playing UK royals.
