The 28th Screen Actors Guild Awards: Six Key Takeaways
The 28th Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards kicked off awards season (at least the televised portion of it) with an elegant and impassioned two-hour telecast in which SAG honored the best in film and television acting over the past year. Here, I recap the show and reflect on what the winners mean (and don’t mean) for the upcoming Oscars and Emmys.
What are the SAG Awards and why are they important?
The SAG Awards are comprised of 15 competitive categories that honor to individual actors and acting ensembles across film and television. The nominations are voted on by a subset of the membership of SAG-AFTRA, a labor union that represents approximately 160,000 film, television, and radio performers. The full membership then votes for the winners. By their very nature, the SAG Awards are a star-studded affair and over the past quarter century they have evolved into a highly esteemed awards ceremony.
Although SAG’s television winners only occasionally coincide with the Primetime Emmys (the top award for television), they have a strong track record as a bellwether for the Academy Awards (the top award for film). Since their inception, the SAG winner has gone on to win the corresponding Oscar 78% of the time in Best Actor, 74% of…
