When I spoke to Delroy Lindo last week, I asked the “Sinners” star how it felt to be the surprise of Oscar nomination morning. He responded with a question of his own.
“Why, in your mind, was I a surprise?” he asked me. “That’s not a trick question. I’m curious in terms of how the process rolls out and what your perception, as a professional, as a journalist, your perception of that process is.”
I must admit, it was a scary way to start an interview. I never want to upset or offend someone right out of the gate. While Lindo and I had a lovely conversation about his nomination and career, I did worry I’d started us off on the wrong foot.
But in journalism, you have to give to get. I can’t ask someone a question without being willing to answer one of my own. His was a good one, and I’d like to dig into it here.
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The no-nomination nominees
I told Lindo the truth. I’m a stats nerd, and his nomination defied the odds. He got into Best Supporting Actor without getting nominated at the Golden Globes, BAFTAs, Actor Awards or Critics Choice. Only 5% of Best Supporting Actor nominees (and 4% of acting nominees in general) this century achieved what Lindo achieved.
Being labeled a surprise has nothing to do with quality, I said, or how much you “deserve” to be in a lineup. It’s simply an acknowledgement that one awards ceremony recognized somebody where others did not. When rubber stamping is the norm, divergence becomes unexpected.
The last performer to do what Lindo did was Andrea Riseborough (“To Leslie”), whose grass-roots campaign brought her a Best Actress upset on nomination morning in 2023. Long-shot nominees make the cut every few years — in this year’s case, making for a pleasant surprise.
“It’s often a self-fulfilling prophecy,” I told Lindo. “People get swayed by narratives, and they make up their mind early on: ‘Well, this is an Oscars thing, and this isn’t.’”
Lindo seemed satisfied, and we quickly pivoted to the joyous moment that was his first Oscar nomination (in case you haven’t heard, his son got to give him the good news). But this conversation did get me thinking about the nature of surprises in awards season.
We love a surprise
Our Awards Tracker works under the assumption that these ceremonies are, figuratively, in conversation with one another. Critics Choice, the Golden Globes, the Actor Awards and the BAFTAs all end up having similar nominees, and that gives us an idea of who’s getting an Oscar nomination.
But the lengthy awards season becomes rather tedious when ceremony after ceremony recognizes the same lineup. One of the most boring races this year — at least, on the nomination front — was actually Best Supporting Actor, which for the longest time felt set in stone. Mescal, Elordi, Penn, del Toroand Skarsgård seemed to be locks, with names like Caton and Sandler occasionally stepping in.
At its worst, that’s what awards season looks like: a long march toward inevitability. No varied taste, just repetitive coronation. A mix of the expected and the unpredictable is preferred. One of the nice things about the BAFTAs and the WGA Awards last week was that they brought in some fresh nominees, even if they did announce their lineups post-Academy.
Seeing someone like Lindo, who gave one of my personal favorite performances this year, break into a category that other organizations froze him out of breathed new life into the Supporting Actor lineup.
So here’s to the best surprise so far this season. May others soon follow.
Sundance at the Oscars
No sooner did I return from Sundance 2026 than I was asked the age-old question: What’s going to be in next year’s Oscar lineup?
Listen, I love way-too-early predictions as much as the next guy. It can be good, harmless fun to look at the things you love and fancast them as future nominees.
But predicting the correlation between Sundance movies and awards season films is a crapshoot at best and a fool’s errand at worst.
Look at last year’s slate. The biggest contender at the 2026 Oscars that premiered at Sundance 2025 is “Train Dreams,” Clint Bentley’s stunning meditation on the passage of time.
I remember hearing rave reviews about this film all the way back in Jan. 2025. But there were several points throughout the season where I wavered over what above-the-line recognition it would get.
Its eventual four nominations (Picture, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography and Original Song) weren’t totally surprising, but it would be pretty hard to guess even just a few months back. I remember some folks at Sundance ’25 predicting that lead actor Joel Edgerton would be the only part of “Train Dreams” to make it into the nominations. Instead, he was probably the film’s biggest omission.
Another big Sundance inclusion this year, Rose Byrne’s critically acclaimed performance in “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” carried her from a January ‘25 premiere to a January ’26 Best Actress nomination. When I saw the movie at last year’s festival, the most common thing I heard was “Rose is exceptional, but this movie is too abrasive for Oscar voters.” I was inclined to agree.
Clearly, that’s not the case.
We also have “The Ugly Stepsister,” a body horror spin on the Cinderella story, in Best Makeup & Hairstyling after its Sundance debut. The number of people who placed this on their Oscar bingo card last January was exactly zero — yet I’m delighted to see it cross the finish line.
Earlier this week, I got to speak with the makeup and hairstyling team, so be on the lookout for that interview in TheWrap’s final Oscars magazine. They sent me what I can only describe as the grossest BTS photos I’ve ever been given.
Your best bet when drawing Oscar predictions from Sundance will always be the documentary lineup. This year, all five films nominated for Best Documentary Feature premiered at Sundance, with nine of the 15 shortlisted docs coming out of the festival.
We just saw two new documentary sales on Thursday: “The Last First: Winter K2” (bought by Apple) and “Once Upon a Time in Harlem” (bought by Neon).
Even then, last year’s U.S. Documentary winner (“Seeds”) didn’t get the Oscar nomination, while the World Documentary winner (“Cutting Through Rocks”) did. So maybe “Nuisance Bear” and “To Hold a Mountain” make it into next year’s lineup, but I wouldn’t exactly call it a safe bet this early on.
Beth de Araújo’s “Josephine,” one of the buzziest titles I saw at the festival, undeniably got a massive boost when it won both the Grand Jury and Audience prizes for the U.S. Dramatic Competition. The last film to achieve this was Best Picture winner “CODA,” and the one before that was Best Picture nominee “Minari.”
Still, keep in mind that some films have gotten the double crown at Sundance without a single Oscar nomination to match. Ryan Coogler’s “Fruitvale Station” once picked up the Grand Jury and Audience prizes, and an Oscar nominee it is not.
