In the event you’ve watched the Display Actors Guild Awards over time, you’ve heard the identify of the prize numerous occasions, even when it hasn’t fairly registered.
“And the Actor goes to … Timothée Chalamet.”
“And the Actor goes to … Demi Moore.”
“And the Actor goes to … ‘Conclave.’”
Now, in an effort to lean into the identify of the statuette and streamline the present’s title, the Display Actors Guild Awards introduced Friday that it’s renaming the ceremony to the Actor Awards. Or, if you wish to get exact (and a bit verbose): the Actor Awards introduced by SAG-AFTRA.
“Now that our international viewers is basically rising, folks don’t all the time perceive what the union identify is,” says awards committee chair JoBeth Williams. “However ‘the Actor Awards’ they acknowledge they usually know they’re going to see their favourite actors after they tune in.”
The SAG Awards have lengthy been a dependable precursor to the Oscars on the awards season calendar, with final 12 months being an exception. (Chalamet, Moore and “Conclave,” winner of the guild’s greatest image equal, the ensemble honor, didn’t repeat their SAG successes.)
For the reason that occasion moved to Netflix in 2024 from TNT and TBS, viewership numbers have elevated, besting pre-pandemic ranges. Final 12 months, per Netflix, the ceremony acquired 4.3 million views on the platform.
That’s a far cry from simply 4 years in the past, when the pandemic compelled ceremonies to postpone and shuffle dates, and the Grammys thought nothing of touchdown on the SAG Awards’ authentic date. (SAG-AFTRA voiced its “excessive disappointment,” then slunk off to Easter Sunday for a scheduled one-hour telecast.)
“[Netflix] noticed the potential of the present to essentially develop an viewers,” says Jon Brockett, longtime showrunner and govt producer. “We’re on 190-plus nations now on Netflix. So the simplification of the identify, from a world perspective, ought to result in even higher consciousness to know who we’re and what we’re all about.”
Which is, in a phrase: actors. Just like the Golden Globes, the Actor Awards (we’ll simply begin calling it that now, attempting it out for dimension) reward lead and supporting performances in motion pictures and tv, and, in lieu of “greatest image” or “greatest sequence,” prizes for performing ensembles. In contrast to the Golden Globes, the ceremony has not been beset by scandal or raised questions on unethical self-dealing.
Nominations for the Actor Awards are chosen by two nominating committees, one for movie and one for tv, comprising 2,500 SAG-AFTRA members which might be randomly chosen annually. Winners are then chosen by energetic SAG-AFTRA members, a large voting physique numbering greater than 130,000.
“We’re all doing what these people up there on the display do, so we have now a robust sense of what it takes to try this and what it takes to make it actually particular,” Williams says of the awards’ voters. “The eyes of the voters are very tuned in to what actors do.”
The Actors Awards will stream dwell on Netflix on March 1. Nominations will probably be introduced on Jan. 7.
