This Week

• Ayo Edebiri is our best new Hollywood star.

• The Oscar nominations that should happen.

• The best fashion from the week of award shows.

• Oprah isn’t subtle.   

Ayo Edebiri Is the Moment 

There’s something incredibly cool that happens when a new celebrity catapults into another level of fame and also seems…incredibly cool. 

Not “cool” in the way that they smoke behind the dumpsters outside the gym doors during lunch. Though maybe you did that, Ayo Edebiri. I don’t know your life. (Is that what kids these days still think is cool?) 

But Edebiri’s massive rise in fame and, with it, the opportunity to showcase her personality, represents the return to celebrity fun. 

Edebiri has won basically every acting award available to her for her role in The Bear in past weeks, and, in return, has given some of the most charming speeches and red carpet interviews I’ve had the pleasure of covering. She also starred in Bottoms, the most underrated comedy of the year, and appeared in Theater Camp, the movie that inspired me to scream at anyone I encounter, “YOU HAVE TO WATCH THEATER CAMP, IT’S SO GOOD!” There’s an amazing scene between her and child actor Alan Kim—it’s literally just two people chatting—that is so different from anything that she’s doing in The Bear or Bottoms on an acting level, that it makes you realize how brilliant she is as a performer. 

Her brand of fun is a delightful embarrassment of dichotomies. She is both gawky and glamorous. Blissfully unscripted and not overly media trained, yet consistently delivering the perfect quote during any interview. An actress who is rising to the A-list thanks to her presence (and continual wins) at award shows, yet who exhibits a relatable presence that pops the balloon of the artifice of those events. 

She’s grateful for the wins and the meaningfulness of them, and yet doesn’t appear to, at least, buy into the pretension of the dog-and-pony show. She looks amazing at these shows, while also ushering an individual, non-conformist sense of fashion and identity that bucks against the bland uniformity that floods the red carpet. She clearly works hard and is so incredibly talented, but manages to be humble… and a boss… but gracious… yet assertive. Mostly, she seems cool and, yes, fun—in whatever those descriptors might mean in a new and changing version of Hollywood. 

To give a performance like she does in The Bear is one thing. (A bit of nerdy trivia: This last week, she won awards for two different seasons of the show. At the Emmys, she was awarded for her supporting role in the first season. At the Golden Globes and Critics Choice Awards, she won in lead for Season 2.) But to be such an undeniable star is another. 

The entirety of my entertainment in these last few weeks of award season have derived from appreciating how grounded and hilarious Edebiri has been while on this star-making journey. 

At the Golden Globes, which aired days after her The Bear co-star Jeremy Allen White broke the internet with his Calvin Klein underwear campaign, she and her castmates were obviously asked about their reactions to it. Her response floored me, because it was funny and it was true: This is her colleague, and she is at a work event. Please stop asking about her mostly naked coworker. 

Her candor has been the best part of this rise in celebrity. I will forever adore her Globes acceptance speech where she thanked her managers’ and agents’...assistants. Because they are the ones who actually respond to her emails. 

And no matter how many times it circulates on my timeline, I will like—or heart, or whatever we call it now on X, formerly Twitter—when the quote she gave to Laverne Cox on the Emmys red carpet circulates. Cox asked her what Edebiri would say to a younger self who dreamed of this moment of becoming an award-winning star. Edebiri’s response: “She didn’t dream of nights like this. She sort of dreamed of just, like, dental insurance. We’ve got dental, we’ve got eye [insurance], we’ve got ear. We can go to the dermatologist.”

I’m not a “Stars, They’re Just Like Us” person. I’ve been doing this job long enough to know that there is not a single celeb who is even in the same stratosphere as us plebeians. Ayo Edebiri, by value of her hard work and, like, winning every single award on TV in the last three weeks, is not like me. But her understanding, even if it’s accidental, of what a new generation craves from a superstar is uncanny. 

Who cares if The Bear is a comedy or drama, when Ayo is the moment. 

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If Oscar Voters Had Any Taste… 

I am a twin (fun fact about me!). When we were in late elementary/early middle school, my brother and I became obsessed with stats. We watched SportsCenter on ESPN every morning. And not just one time to check the scores…we watched three or four times, to memorize them. 

At some point in a journey that my therapist and I are still parsing out decades later, the obsession with stats changed. I stopped caring about Mark McGwire vs. Sammy Sosa. I only cared to know who was nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the Oscars throughout my lifetime. (There’s no official Gay Card, but that obsession is basically it.)

In any case, monitoring the awards season became more than a hobby; it’s now part of my profession. Sorry to my twin brother whose encyclopedic knowledge of the RBIs from the roster of the 1999 New York Mets is not that applicable to his (much higher paying) job.

So having covered and observed and obsessed over this entire awards season, I decided to do something different this year. 

I have a hunch as to which performers and films are going to get nominated for the Oscars when the announcement happens on Tuesday morning. The most disappointing part of awards season is how much consensus there is before the Oscar nominations happen; the deserving smaller candidates that used to break in rarely do anymore.

So instead of a predictions list, here’s my alternate take: the nominees that I wish were a part of the conversation and that I will be sad to miss on that list when it comes out. (If they’re not here, well, that’s because I predict them! Predictions are boring, especially now when they’re obvious.)

Best Picture: All of Us Strangers; Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret.; Origin; Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning; Passages; Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé; Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse; Theater Camp; A Thousand and One; You Hurt My Feelings

Best Actress: Fantasia Barrino, The Color Purple; Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Origin; Julia Louis-Dreyfus, You Hurt My Feelings; Teyana Taylor, A Thousand and One; Michelle Wiliams, Showing Up

Best Actor: Gael Garcia Bernal, Cassandro; Josh O’Connor, La Chimera; Franz Rogowski, Passages; Andrew Scott, All of Us Strangers; Teo Yoo, Past Lives

Best Supporting Actress: Penelope Cruz, Ferrari; Claire Foy, All of Us Strangers; Taraji P. Henson, The Color Purple; Rachel McAdams, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.; Audra McDonald, Origin

Best Supporting Actor: Noah Galvin, Theater Camp; Glenn Howerton, BlackBerry; Milo Machado Graner, Anatomy of a Fall; Chris Messina, Air; Dominic Sessa, The Holdovers

Anyway, I hope all of these projects and performers are nominated on Tuesday. If nothing else, you now have a great list of movies and performances to watch.

The Mothers Are Mothering 

Here are the best dressed celebrities from this past weekend of awards, as chosen by me, a person who is currently wearing the 20th generation same pair of jeans and sneakers he started in 2007 (not as a style statement, but out of no taste), but who still likes to look at fashion!!!  

Jessica Chastain, the most glamorous highlighter I have ever seen: 

Niecy Nash Betts, dressed for the funeral for all the gays that are deceased after seeing how good she looks:

Oprah Winfrey, proving that all celebs should dress in theme to the title of the movie they’re nominated for: 

All Other Flower Bouquets Should Be Ashamed

Speaking of Oprah and awards, she sent a massive bouquet of flowers to Quinta Brunson to congratulate her on her Emmy win, and the photo of 4’11” Brunson standing with them had me cracking up. 

More From The Daily Beast’s Obsessed 

We talked to Ava DuVernay and Aunajue Ellis-Taylor about Origin, a movie that everyone needs to see. Read more.

The trailer for Jennifer Lopez’ gloriously bonkers-looking new musical/movie/fever dream has arrived. Read more.

Renée Rapp’s press tour for Mean Girls is one for the ages. Read more.

• Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell: This three-hour drama is worth your time (and three-hour dramas so rarely are!). (Now in theaters)

• Jacqueline Novak: Get On Your Knees: This surprising, hilarious comedy special is finally heading to Netflix. (Tues. on Netflix)

• A Real Bug’s Life: A whimsical, child-friendly take on nature documentaries inspired by the Pixar film. (Wed. on Disney+)

• I.S.S.: About as thrilling as a trip to the bathroom. (Now in theaters)

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