Why Chadwick Boseman lost to Anthony Hopkins with Oscars voters
In a shock twist, Chadwick Boseman missed out on the Best Actor Oscar to Anthony Hopkins. Now insiders have revealed why the late star didn’t win.
The Oscars are never short on surprises.
Remember when the controversial Green Book beat the favoured Roma for Best Picture in 2019? Or when La La Land was mistakenly called to the stage instead of actual victor Moonlight in 2017? Or way back in 1997, when li’l Shakespeare In Love took down big honkin’ Saving Private Ryan? Usually that’s all part of the fun.
But to casual film fans, yesterday’s big upset packed a particularly emotional wallop: The late Chadwick Boseman lost the Best Actor prize to Anthony Hopkins.
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The final award of the evening had always previously been Best Picture, but it was changed to Best Actor for this year’s event. So, viewers assumed that move was to honour Boseman, who died in August of colon cancer aged 43. But, shocking everyone, he didn’t win for his role in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Instead, Hopkins won for his depiction of a man suffering dementia in The Father.
Even more anticlimactic, the 83-year-old – the oldest ever Best Actor winner – was in Wales, and didn’t deliver a speech. It was the fizzle heard around the world.
Some voters were shocked.
“My jaw dropped,” a voting member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences told The Post. “What the hell was that? I was totally unaware of any sort of movement towards Anthony Hopkins within the Academy. I voted for Chadwick, even if I found the movie itself to be a bit too theatrical for me to be really passionate about it. I figured most were doing similar, and if I’d heard any murmurs about voting for another nominee it was for Riz Ahmed.”
However, similar to when a silent majority opted for Olivia Colman instead of Glenn Close or Lady Gaga in 2019, most people checked Hopkins’ box this year.
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Joyce Eng, senior editor of the award season punditry website GoldDerby, said that the win came down, in part, to good old-fashioned Hollywood strategy – something Netflix has yet to master.
“On paper, Chadwick Boseman appeared to be the favourite because he won most of the precursor awards and Anthony Hopkins only had the BAFTA,” Eng told The Post, noting that the Ma Rainey’s actor won the SAG Award and the Golden Globe.
“But I think there was something in play that general fans were not aware of, and that’s the fact that The Father was peaking at exactly the right time [for the Oscars]. Sony Pictures Classics held off releasing the film ’til literally the last minute in theatres. It opened February 26.”
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, on the other hand, dropped on Netflix back in November, during a tricky year with ample distractions.
“They just knew what they were doing,” Eng added of Sony.
Also, let’s make something clear: Like Boseman in Ma Rainey’s, Hopkins gives a triumphant and very deserving performance in The Father. He won only once before, for The Silence Of the Lambs almost 30 years ago.
The Welshman gave a kind speech the next day on Instagram, and paid tribute to Boseman.
“At 83 years of age, I did not expect to get this award,” he said. “I really didn’t. I am grateful to the Academy, and thank you.
“And I want to pay tribute to Chadwick Boseman, who was taken from us far too early,” he said.
Still, the choice to place a category at the end of the evening when there was a chance the winner or proxy might not even be in attendance has been criticised.
If nothing else, it certainly proved one thing: The ballot count really is secret.
The aftershocks will continue for some time to come.
“I love Anthony Hopkins and his performance,” the Oscar voter said. “But it was a really disappointing end to the evening.”
This article originally appeared on the New York Post and was reproduced with permission
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