Recapping the 2021 SAG Awards

By Dan Skip Allen

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020): (L to R), Viola Davis as Ma Rainey, Director George C. Wolfe, and Chadwick Boseman as Levee. Cr. David Lee / Netflix.

The Screen Actors Guild Awards (SAG) at long last announced their awards on a one-hour broadcast on TNT & TBS simultaneously. The show was pre-recorded Wednesday and surprisingly there weren't any leaks, with the one exception being Wonder Woman 1984 being leaked as Best Stunt Ensemble, an award its predecessor won two years ago. 

The show was littered with actor interviews and commentaries throughout the broadcast. The actors were gushing about the films they had seen and the other actors in the various categories other than themselves. This helped the one-hour broadcast go by very fast, but not as fast as if they had only announced the nominees and winners instead. This goes with the tradition of the SAG's having a few actors doing the "I Am An Actor" bit at the beginning of the broadcast each year. It helps to know a little bit about where these people come from and who they are as people before they were actors. I always like this cold opening on previous broadcasts.

The big winner on the night was Ma Rainey's Black Bottom pulling in the two leading actor awards out of a potential 4 awards it could have gotten. Chadwick Boseman won for the best performance by a leading actor in a movie for his role of Levy and Viola Davis won for best performance by a female in a movie. Boseman won posthumously and his widow accepted on his behalf. Does this bode well for these actors at the Academy Awards? Who knows? It's a good sign, though. 

The other big award of the night was given to the huge cast of Trial of the Chicago 7, as it won the award for best ensemble in a movie. The cast made it the obvious choice to win, but the Academy Awards might have something different to say on the matter. They don't nominate because of the cast, they nominate because of the quality of the film as a whole. Aaron Sorkin and Sacha Baron Cohen both still have a chance to win as well at the Oscars.

The Best Supporting Actor and Actress Awards went to Daniel Kaluuya for Judas and the Black Messiah as Fred Hampton and Youn Yuh-jung for Minari as the feisty grandmother in the beautiful family drama. This might put a monkey wrench into an already confusing best-supporting actress race because somebody different has won at every awards ceremony so far: Maria Bakalova at the Critics Choice Awards, Jodie Foster at the Golden Globe Awards, and now Youn at the SAGs. Is this a good sign for Glenn Close? We will see.

If my predictions are to be believed on Gold Derby, the race in some of these categories isn't over yet. I went 2 for 6, and that's not very good. Boseman, Kaluuya, Zhao and Nomadland, and Soul seem like the only certainties going into the Academy Awards in three weeks. Maybe the BAFTAS can shine a little more light on this already confusing awards season so far.