by Christina Ricci isn’t happy that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences is reviewing Andrea Riseborough’s Best Actress nomination.
The Yellow jackets the star took to Instagram on Friday to post a statement that has since been deleted, Deadline reported. In the statement, Ricci lashed out at the Academy’s announcement that they would be looking into Riseborough’s Oscar nomination for the independent film To Leslie, in which the British actress plays a Texas woman who squanders her lottery winnings while coping with alcoholism. Riseborough’s nomination followed a word-of-mouth campaign in which her celebrity peers publicly praised her performance, an approach the Academy is now rethinking.
Ricci, for one, stands alongside Riseborough and the grassroots campaign that has gotten his awards season buzz.
“It seems exhilarating that the ‘surprise nomination’ (meaning tons of money weren’t spent placing this actress) of a legitimately brilliant performance is under investigation,” Ricci wrote. “So it’s only the films and actors who can afford the campaigns that deserve recognition? It seems to me elitist and exclusive and frankly very backward.
Ricci continued, noting that Riseborough herself had “nothing to do with campaigning” for the nomination. However, moving forward, “her nomination will now be tainted by this.”
“If he took away their shame,” Ricci closed his now-deleted post.
Last week, the Academy confirmed it would “conduct a review of campaign procedures around this year’s candidates.” However, they have not named To Leslie specifically. Instead, they said they are working to “ensure the Awards competition is conducted fairly and ethically.”
“We are committed to ensuring an inclusive awards process,” the statement read. “We are conducting a review of campaign procedures around this year’s nominees, to ensure that no guidelines have been breached and to inform us if guidelines changes may be necessary in a new era of social media and digital communication. We are confident. in the integrity of our nomination and voting processes and support genuine grassroots campaigns for outstanding performance.”
Active support for To Leslie on the social media of stars like Kate Winslet, Edward Norton and Gwyneth Paltrow appears to be to blame for the nod review, which some have questioned as potentially ‘illegal’. The review is intended to determine whether the nomination violated existing rules against voting lobbying, as previously reported by Yahoo Entertainment.
The grassroots campaign to get Riseborough a nomination is said to have “apparently excluded” two black actresses from the nomination score: Viola Davis for The King Woman, and Danielle Deadwyler for Until. Both stars’ were bolstered by well-funded campaigns from Sony and MGM/Amazon, respectively, and were widely expected to garner recognition, but presumably lack access to a network of powerful (and, let’s be honest, white) friends in the Academy to campaign for the Oscars on their behalf,” Disk noted writer Matt Belloni.
The AMPAS board of directors will meet on Tuesday 31 January to discuss the matter.
Riseborough initially said she was “stunned” to receive the nomination, Deadline reported after the announcement of the Oscar nominations.
“It’s such an unexpected ray of light. It was so hard to believe it could ever happen because we weren’t really in the running for anything else,” said Riseborough. “Even though we had a lot of support, the idea that it could actually happen seemed so far away.”
