If Michelle Williams Goes For Best Actress, The Oscars Just Got A Lot More Interesting

thegamer.com:

It's just about close enough to Oscar season for us to start talking about it, at least if you're the sort of boring old soul who follows award season. If so, welcome! You're in good company! Most of the big challengers have only been shown on the festival circuit, if at all, so I'm not writing my personal predictions here, but cataloguing what has already become the tightest contest of the year. Rumours are circulating that Michelle Williams is set to campaign for Best Actress for her turn in The Fabelmans, and that kicks the whole thing up a gear.

Williams was widely expected to aim for the Best Supporting Actress category instead. She plays a similar role in The Fabelmans as Caitriona Balfe did in Belfast last year - mother to the child protagonist. While Balfe missed out altogether, she and on-screen husband Jamie Dornan both campaigned for Best Supporting. Judi Dench, who had a smaller role than Balfe, did make the cut for Belfast, which may have played into Williams' decision. There's a theory that Balfe ended up with some noms in Actress and some in Supporting Actress, resulting in her missing out altogether. The theory around Dornan is that he probably wasn't quite in the top five in either category, but that's another story. Williams has four nominations in her career - two in each category - but has never won, and while I haven't seen The Fablemans, I trust the talk that Spielberg has directed a nomination-worthy performance out of her. But her choice has major ramifications for both categories.

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There are still time for surprises to reveal themselves, and once the general public and wider sphere of critics have seen