Black Panther Receives Best Ensemble Award – Great

The Screen Actors Guild has handed out their six film awards for 2019, and the Marvel billion-dollar-plus cultural phenomenon Black Panther is your winner for Best Ensemble. Technically, it was the most awarded film of the night with two wins. It also picked up the Best Stunt Ensemble. Otherwise, the Best Actor Award went to Rami Malek for his portrayal of Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody, and Glenn Close won Best Actress for The Wife.

Here’s the list of winners:

Best Ensemble – Black Panther
Best Actor – Rami Malek, Bohemian Rhapsody
Best Actress-Glenn Close – The Wife
Best Supporting Actor – Mahershala Ali, Green Book
Best Supporting Actress – Emily Blunt, A Quiet Place
Best Stunts – Black Panther

So otherwise at SAG, it was no surprise to see Mahershala win for Green Book. He’s been the one constant in the tricky acting races this year, and I feel he can’t lose now at both the Oscars and at BAFTA, where he was overlooked for his Oscar-winning performance in Moonlight.

The biggest shock of the night, though, was seeing Emily Blunt win over her Oscar-nominated competitors for her role in A Quiet Place. The odds-on-favorites were Amy Adams for Vice, or either Rachel Weisz or Emma Stone for The Favourite. But no, the double-nominated Blunt pulled it off (she was also nominated in Lead Actress for Mary Poppins Returns).

Really quick, what do these wins mean for the Oscars? Well, I feel now that both Mahershala and Glenn can’t lose for their respective races. Glenn, likewise, has won practically everything this season, with the exception of Critics Choice, where she tied with Lady Gaga for A Star is Born.

The other two acting races are not 100% done, but I feel a momentum shift now in Rami Malek’s favor for Bohemian Rhapsody. Since Queen is a British rock band, and the film did better overall than Vice, BAFTA will also go with Rami. From there, history will repeat itself, like it did four years ago when Michael Keaton, the favorite for Birdman, lost Best Actor at SAG to Eddie Redmayne, who went on to sweep both BAFTA and Oscar, and he had won the other Globe award earlier in the year, the same way Christian Bale did three weeks ago.

Best Supporting Actress, though, is another story. Emily Blunt is not nominated at either BAFTA or Oscars for her work this year, so those two shows will have to go with someone else. I think Rachel Weisz will win at BAFTA since The Favourite is the most nominated film over there, it’ll likely be the most awarded film of the night, and Weisz famously did not win BAFTA the year she won the Oscar for The Constant Gardener, so this will be a makeup award. The favorite at the Oscars, however, is Regina King, who wasn’t nominated here tonight or at BAFTA. The same thing happened to Sylvester Stallone three years ago for Creed, and his lack of nominations at the later awards shows were to blame for his missing the Oscar, so will history repeat itself again in this category? Maybe. That year the Oscar winner, Mark Rylance, only won BAFTA before the Oscar, which would be the same scenario for Weisz. And like Weisz, Rylance’s film is up for Best Picture, and Regina’s is not. So we have a lot of thinking left to do in that category.

As for Best Picture, the Ensemble award is SAG’s equivalent, but I feel Black Panther is far from a Best Picture winner. The film didn’t do very well with the Oscar voters, landing seven nominations, and it’s not up for directing, any of the acting races, or screenplay, and no Best Picture winner has won without those in over 85 years (Grand Hotel from 1932 is the last one to do it). The competitors tonight like A Star is Born and BlacKkKlansman would have been choices that could question who will win Best Picture, but with both films being shut out, I feel both of their chances for Best Picture wins might go with them. I feel right now that, like two years ago, the SAG Ensemble award winner will be a non-player at the Oscars. That year it was Hidden Figures, another cast that was African-American heavy and celebrated diversity. There were a few conspiracy-theorist type predictors out there saying BlacKkKlansman would win tonight, then pull ahead at the Directors Guild Awards, where Spike Lee is nominated, and then win Best Picture, but I feel that’s not likely. Nope, I’m sticking with the ten-time nominated Roma to win in just under a month at the Oscars.