Once in a Lifetime
With To Leslie earning British actor Andrea Riseborough a shock Oscar nomination, Storyboard Ella Kemp lifts the curtain on the campaign that could.
Is anything ever fair, really, in love and (a)war(ds season)? No Oscars nomination event goes without an outcry of snubs or surprises, but the 2023 batch of lucky nominees raised a few more, or just one more question than usual, when Andrea Riseborough was nominated for her role in über-low budget drama To Leslie.
Make no mistake: Andrea Riseborough is one of the last remaining truly chameleonic actors we have, a force of nature from the north of England who everyone respects, likes and wants to celebrate – clearly. But there was something unusual about her sudden nomination, in the year when Viola Davis and Danielle Deadwyler failed to be recognised for their work in The Woman King and Till respectively.
If you’ve been living under a rock and missed it, the long and short of it saw Mary McCormack, actor and wife of To Leslie director Michael Morris, lead a star-studded unorthodox campaign to secure Riseborough a nomination. It was unconventional because it simply didn’t cost much – instead of major studios sending out swag bags and paying for ad-space, McCormack turned word of mouth into something like the dictionary of the entire body (allow it) with stubborn follow-ups to the most famous people she knew.
The result saw sincere tweets from high-profile stars turn into baffled memes from eternally online stans. “Don’t miss ‘To Leslie’ a small film with a giant heart, directed by Michael Morris with an unforgettable performance by @andreariseborough. What a gem! Bravo @filmbymichaelmorris! and @AndreaRiseborough,” Mia Farrow tweeted, with Gwyneth Paltrow posing for a photo with Riseborough three days later, saying she “should win every award there is and all the ones that haven’t been invented yet.” You do the maths.
Riseborough’s nomination, in a film made for less than $1million which only made just over $27,000 at the global box office after being released last year, should theoretically be seen as a major win for independent cinema, but it also throws up sticky questions of cronyism in Hollywood and what an actual campaign really means.
In the past, the Academy has happily rescinded Oscar nominations if finding proof of individual lobbying from the nominee to convince their peers to vote for them and to tactically eradicate the competition. In Riseborough’s case, nothing was found (and if you’ve ever watched anything she’s done not-in-character, it’s hard to imagine any person more chill, and so unlikely to berate people to shower her with praise) and so she remains nominated.
Now being one of the few people who has watched To Leslie, it’s undoubtedly a tour de force from Riseborough. She plays the titular character with incandescent volatility one minute and tender vulnerability the next, containing every possible emotion in just one everywoman who won the lottery and, well, spent it all on her addiction.
It takes real stamina to deal in the level emotion Riseborough does without veering into melodrama or pantomime, and to keep herself and her role grounded in the character, even at this level of fame and friendship with the brightest Hollywood stars. So who’s to blame for the surprise, really: the star, or the system?
King and Deadwyler were at the forefront of enormous studio-backed campaigns having released mighty films full of artistic merit, in wonderfully different ways to To Leslie. They, alongside Riseborough, are hugely versatile performers and it remains a crying shame that only five women can be nominated when it feels like we spend the entire year shouting about talented men.
The Academy did say that going forward they would change the rules to avoid any confusion or controversy like the noise surrounding the campaign for To Leslie, despite not finding it to be nefarious or rule-breaking. It says much more about our broken brains and systems that more women cannot be celebrated and recognised for their work, both by institutions and by individual people, than it does about the actors themselves.
Andrea Riseborough was never to blame for whatever happened in this year’s Oscars nomination, and the Newcastle artist is beyond entitled to bask in the glory of her first nod from the Academy. Still: the tale of To Leslie spells out warning signs for those trying to buy success, hoodwink friends into cheating the system, and all of those who think that they are better than the artists themselves putting in the work. More straightforwardly good energy for good performances moving forward please.
