Brits Fare Poorly at a Smooth Sailing But Unsurprising Oscars

After a good few years of overlong, cringingly unfunny, and pandering Academy Awards telecasts, this year’s Oscars had a refreshing sharpness and humor to them – led by host Conan O’Brien, whose enthusiasm, wit, and sincerity uplifted a pretty unsurprising and tired roster of awardees. One pack that fared particularly poorly were the Brits – after a bumper roster of talent nominated and winning last year, big names like Ralph Fiennes, Cynthia Erivo, and Wallace & Gromit lost out on trophies, even if British technical artists and craftspeople were much more fortunate. Here, we run down the British highlights of the 97th Academy Awards.

The ceremony started with Ariana Grande singing “Over the Rainbow,” followed by Erivo emerging to dazzle the crowd with a live rendition of “Defying Gravity.” Conan’s opening monologue followed, which made the fun observation that Ralph Fiennes has now been nominated three times, so if he loses again, everyone gets to pronounce his first name phonetically. Tough break, Ralph. (Fiennes did not win Best Actor.)

Onto the awards: no Brits nominated for Best Supporting Actor, but Telly Visions regular Guy Pearce was up for his performance in The Brutalist as the charming but insidious American industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren. Pearce’s upfront and political candor has been a blessing in such a busy and unpleasant awards season, and while you couldn’t quite call Succession's Kieran Culkin’s win a “robbery”, Pearce was the more deserving recipient. (Also, as Robert Downey Jr. introduced each of the nominees, everyone remembered in real time that Pearce was the villain to Tony Stark in Iron Man 3.)

Andrew Garfield (looking like he fell out of 1978 and has the cocaine to prove it) was not nominated for any awards tonight. However, when he presented the Oscars for Best Animated Film and Best Animated Short Film, he took the opportunity to thank his co-presenter Goldie Hawn for her lifetime of exceptional work – she was a favorite of his late mother. Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl lost in the first category, but to a very deserving winner – Flow, the modest Latvian environmental animal adventure that bested Disney, Universal, and Netflix in one fell swoop. It’s Latvia’s first nomination and win at the Oscars: always a cause worth celebrating.

The primary British wins were not for celebrity directors or actors, but esteemed technical teams. As production for Wicked was based in the U.K., the Best Production Design Oscar went to English production designer Nathan Crowley and set decorator Lee Sandales, who seemed appropriately bumbling and giddy at their moment in the spotlight, a delightful pairing with the historic win for Paul Tazewell as the first Black artist to win the Costume design category. Dune: Part Two picked up two Oscars, Best Sound and Visual Effects, and trophies were handed out to British sound designer Gareth John, English visual effects supervisor Paul Lambert, Welsh-Canadian VFX artist Rhys Salcombe, alongside their American, Canadian, and German colleagues.

It became clear after director Sean Baker’s Original Screenplay and Editing wins for Anora that an Anora sweep was on the cards, ultimately netting the independent filmmaker a record-breaking four trophies and one Best Actress Oscar for its foul-mouthed starlet, Mikey Madison. This meant Brit nominees like Erivo, Conclave’s Northern Irish editor Nick Emerson and English producers Tessa Ross and Juliette Howell, and The Substance’s producers Eric Fullner and New Zealand-British Tim Bevan lost out to Sean Baker’s maximalist-realism dramedy about a Brighton Beach sex worker falling in love with a Russian oligarch’s son.

A few Brits championed elsewhere though – The Brutalist netted Best Cinematography and Best Original Score for Englishmen Lol Crawley and Daniel Blumberg, and the latter even gave a shout out to a local London cafe and music venue. British playwright and screenwriter Peter Straughan picked up an Oscar for Conclave, based on British author Robert Harris’ novel, so viewers were not lacking for calm, collected British accents being gracious throughout the whole ceremony. One can only imagine how demure Ralph Fiennes would have been in comparison to the vague and self-indulgent speech (though perhaps not too much so by Oscar standards) that Best Actor winner Adrien Brody delivered – one of the longest in Academy history.

Sadly, The Brutalist’s Felicity Jones lost to Emilia Perez’s Zoe Saldaña for Best Supporting Actor, also beating European celebrity royalty Isabella Rossellini. Elton John also lost for Best Original Song; he wrote “Never Too Late” for the documentary of the same name about, well, himself. Getting fellow British music icon Mick Jagger to announce a different winner probably made it extra disappointing. However, in a brighter musical spot, British breakout star Rae joined with Korean artist Lisa and American rapper Doja Cat to do an in memoriam segment for the passing of the James Bond Franchise... err, "A Tribute to James Bond to honor Barbara Broccoli being awarded the Governor's Prize in November."

Overall, a fine Oscars that lacked some wild card factor to make the show exciting – a more exciting group of nominees (and unexpected winners) would have gone a long way to fix that. Kneecap may not have been nominated, but “Get Your Brits Out” was still heard and felt.

The Oscar telecast is available to stream on Hulu and on Disney+ under the Hulu tile.