How Andrea Riseborough’s last-minute Oscar campaign for To Leslie cinched her a nomination
Andrea Riseborough snuck into the Oscars race for her performance in Michael Morris' To Leslie
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Of all the surprises that happened with this year’s Oscar nominations, one of the buzzier ones is the Best Actress nomination for Andrea Riseborough. Her eleventh-hour, word-of-mouth Oscar campaign for her performance in Michael Morris’ indie drama To Leslie was a success, with her name sitting amongst fellow nominees Cate Blanchett, Michelle Yeoh, Michelle Williams, and Ana de Armas.
“I’m astounded,” Riseborough tells Deadline. “It’s such an unexpected ray of light. It was so hard to believe it might ever happen because we really hadn’t been in the running for anything else. Even though we had a lot of support, the idea it might actually happen seemed so far away.”
To Leslie quietly debuted at the 2022 SXSW Film Festival in March, with only $27,000 grossed over its subsequent theatrical release.
Riseborough’s backing by the powerful CAA finally came into play in November, when she and Morris turned to their famous friends to help spread the word with screenings and a word-of-mouth FYC campaign.
Charlize Theron hosted a screening at CAA, followed by screenings hosted by Gwyneth Paltrow, Courteney Cox, Edward Norton, Jennifer Aniston, and Minnie Driver. Fellow actors (mostly women) such as Kate Winslet, Melanie Lynsky, Demi Moore, Jane Fonda, Naomi Watts, Laura Dern, and Frances Fisher began to come out of the woodwork to praise Riseborough’s performance as a single mother living in West Texas who squanders her lottery winnings.
“I was just struck by its authenticity. I felt like I was watching a movie from the ’70s, a time when so many of my favorite films were made. Coming Home, Tender Mercies, Badlands. Movies about the human experience. Made without judgment, or commentary, just that magic of watching people behave,” actor Sarah Paulson told The Hollywood Reporter earlier this month. “Andrea’s performance affected me profoundly; achingly human and without vanity—and I do not mean ‘vanity’ in terms of appearance, I mean ‘without awareness of how one is perceived or how one will be perceived’—just total embodiment. Immersion. Movies like this, made for little money, that are this powerful and true, should be given the same attention and consideration as those that have huge studios and therefore budgets behind them.”
Ultimately, the campaign worked. Riseborough cinched a nomination, her first like many other nominees this year.
“You always think, ‘If we’ve done a good enough job it will break through the noise,’ but often it’s just impossible to compete with millions of dollars of advertising,” Riseborough says. “Every year, for some reason, there are spotlights shining brighter in some places than in others, and maybe it is just all to do with money, though I try not to be cynical in that way. It has been special to feel so supported by the community—especially by actors—and to feel like the work has broken through that. It’s really not something I’ve ever experienced before.”
Riseborough’s no stranger to giving gripping, well-executed performances, seen in Brandon Cronenberg’s Possessor or Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Birdman. She is not a nobody actor without a full body of work. She’s been waiting in the wings for years now, and hopefully, this nomination means we’ll see more center-stage performances from her.
17 Comments
I guess we got an answer to this question then.“Are we an effective team?”
The BAFTA Tea Party sounds like a real rave.
Awesome to see her get some love. Riseborough is consistently good in everything she is in, even if it’s not particularly great. Waco was a good example, the series was middling at best, but she was a lone bright spot. Her Black Mirror episode was also not “acclaimed”, though I liked it, and she was FANTASTIC in it. Oblivion, basically the first role I remember her in, middling film but she was great in it. Not even gonna bring up Amsterdam. Oddly enough, she and Michael Shannon are in like half a dozen fims together, maybe more?…. so I consider them the same entity at this point. Looking forward to seeing her new film.
Loved her in Mandy! And that episode of Black Mirror.
I love small films (The Spectacular Now, Before Sunrise, etc.) but am always troubled when the first thing someone says about it is how great the acting is (or how “authentic” it is). Think of your favorite films. What do you say to people — hey, the acting is great, or hey, this movie rocks? Acting/authenticity should serve the film, not the other way around. Too many small films feel like fodder for actors’ sizzle reels. (This is not an accusation against this film, which is 100% on my watch list, but brings to mind one of my biggest frustrations with acting honors.)
I think watching great acting can be a wonderful thrill in itself, although I do largely agree with you anyway. Most of my favorite movies have great performances but those are only a pieces of the much larger whole. But a movie like Banshees of Inisherin is almost entirely reliant on its stellar performances, and I think it’s also one of my favorites. The story is about the most boring pitch I can think of: One guy doesn’t want to be friends with some other guy. It still fits with your dictum that acting should serve the film, but without those actors it’s basically a lot of really nice B roll of Ireland plus a couple of very good animals.
I went in to Banshees with very modest expectations and no idea what it was about. Man, that was a great movie.
Are we seriously praising how someone has managed to get a nomination for a movie almost no one has seen purely on ruthless politicking? How is this any different than Harvey Weinstein’s BS with Shakespeare In Love?
Everyone campaigns hard though? Everyone has people in their agency badmouthing the rival candidates and making sure they attend the right parties and schmooze the right people. Maybe the actors themselves are chill but their agents and the studios never are.
She made an average movie with a very cheesy ending quite good and worth watching. Check it out.
How Andrea Riseborough’s last-minute Oscar campaign for To Leslie cinched her a nominationShe asked to speak to the Oscar’s manager.
Fellow actors (mostly women) such as Kate Winslet, Melanie Lynsky, Demi Moore, Jane Fonda, Naomi Watts, Laura Dern, and Frances Fisher
*Lynskey
Im just glad another white person was nominated. Too bad Viola didn’t get nominated. I guess she didn’t work hard enough.
I just can’t believe Ana de Armas got a nom for… that