An Awards Show by Any Other Name |
As awards season heads into full swing with this weekend’s Governors Awards—the annual gala where the Academy bestows honorary Oscars on several industry titans—a major makeover has been unveiled. That’s right: The SAG Awards are now the Actor Awards.
I’m Rebecca Ford, and today Vanity Fair revealed this new, streamlined name. It feels like a smart move to me: While the SAG-AFTRA union is a well-known entity within the industry, it’s not as widely known to the general public. Calling this show the Actor Awards makes it very clear what the show is all about: honoring actors, with votes cast by actors.
SAG Awards Committee chair JoBeth Williams and showrunner Jon Brockett told me that this change had been discussed since as far back as 2012, when SAG and AFTRA merged. When the SAG Awards ditched cable TV to partner with Netflix, it felt like it was finally time for a name that would be more understandable to a global audience. “We really want the show to grow beyond just a domestic audience, and I think something simple and straightforward like the Actor Awards is a way to identify who we are very quickly and very easily,” said Brockett.
Though we are still several months out from next year’s SAG Awards—sorry, Actor Awards—which will take place March 1, this ceremony will be one of the most valuable indicators of what might happen at the Oscars. There is plenty of overlap between the two voting bodies, and the acting branch remains the biggest branch of the Academy. When Michelle Yeoh and Jamie Lee Curtis both won at the SAG Awards in 2023, their momentum indicated that Everything Everywhere All at Once was in a very strong position, and that the two women could beat Cate Blanchett and Angela Bassett in their respective categories. (And they did!)
This weekend, I’ll be at the Governors Awards, where most of this season’s Oscar contenders will be out in full force. It’s a great room in which to chat with voters about the films that are getting noticed—and I’ll be sure to report back what I hear. |
