From Wicked to The Brutalist: What we learned from the biggest stars of this year’s Oscars
Ahead of the Oscars 2025, here’s what nominees from Brady Corbet and Cynthia Erivo to Clarence Maclin, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, James Mangold and Nick Park told us
Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande in Wicked. Image: Universal Pictures
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It’s the biggest night of the year for film fans, as the Academy Awards takes place in Los Angeles on Sunday (2 March). With the city still reeling from January’s horrific wildfires, this will be an Oscar night like no other. But in Hollywood, the show always goes on.
From The Brutalist to Wicked, via Nickel Boys, I’m Still Here, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, Sing Sing and A Complete Unknown, Big Issue has been talking to the movie stars and movie makers in the months leading up to the 97th Academy Awards. Here’s what they had to say.
Wicked
Best Actress nominee, Cynthia Erivo spoke to us before Wicked was released: “Elphaba’s been an outsider since she was born and we watch her work towards acceptance of that fact. I think that’s a really beautiful thing to explore,” she said.
“People underestimate the bravery it takes to just be yourself. I know I’m very different. Even just to look at me, I’m different. And I’m OK with that. In fact, I’ve become more than OK with that. I enjoy it. I enjoy it because it encourages other people to just be them.”
Ariana Grande as Glinda. Image: Giles Keyte/Universal Pictures
Jon M Chu, director of this Best Picture nominee, also talked of the film’s political relevance to the time of Donald Trump’s return to the White House: “A story is meant to be told when it’s meant to be told. The show was actually very prophetic, talking about some of the same things we’re going through now. What is truth? Who gets to tell the story? Who determines who’s a hero, who’s a villain?”
The Brutalist is another Best Picture contender – with Brady Corbet (Best Director), Best Actor Adrien Brody, Best Original Screenplay hopefuls Corbet and Mona Fastvold and Best Supporting Actress Felicity Jones among its other nominations.
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The Brutalist star, Adrien Brody, writing his Oscars acceptance speech, perhaps?
Corbet told Big Issue: “This film was really not designed with this sort of reception in mind. Frankly, initially, I was concerned! I thought we’d made something rather divisive. It’s a very, very radical movie. The film is a tug-of-war between art and commerce. And it’s about Otherness.”
With nominations for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay (RaMell Ross and Joslyn Barnes), the adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s powerful, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Nickel Boys features Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, who herself was unlucky not to be nominated for her performance in director Ava DuVernay’s Origin last year.
She told us: “I think you can exploit Black women’s tears. So I try to look at it like, OK, this is what is demanded of the scene. What is different about this woman’s pain? How do I honour the specifics of it? I get asked to go to those places a lot, in the roles that I played recently at least.
“I think because [Nickel Boys] was so weird and strange, and I was reaching for something that I couldn’t touch – I think that’s what did a lot of the work for me.”
A Complete Unknown
The brilliant Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown has been one of the biggest films of the year – securing a Best Picture nomination and a Best Actor nomination for Timothée Chalamet’s captivating central performance.
We spoke to James Mangold, also nominated for Best Director, about the film.
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Oscar nominees James Mangold and Timothée Chalamet recreate an early Dylan recording session. Image: Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures
“Speaking as a classicist and an old school filmmaker, I feel like I’m a little bit of a misfit in the in the world of contemporary filmmaking. I want to make modern films that speak to a modern audience, but I really don’t want to let go of some of the classical style that we’ve used… Maybe that comes from the fact that I’m also a screenwriter, so I feel like, one way or another, I’m getting my message out. I don’t have to say, ‘Look at me.’
“But where I’m getting at with this is that part of the appeal of folk music to me is that it’s not about the production or adornment. There isn’t a fig leaf of dazzle or sizzle to hide behind. This is a movie about people communicating about love and life and injustice and passion and frustration and philosophical ambiguities through the meat and potatoes of a man or woman’s voice, words and a guitar. And that is really powerful to me. Because I miss it. I feel like I need it.
“And the world our movie inhabits and kind of re-animates is one where people were still fighting for attention, but it was coming from passion and commitment and craft. We can talk all day about genius and vision, but craft is also really important. Excellence in fabrication, whether it’s a table, a chair, a song or a car, is something that is lost, or feels harder to find in this world.
“This is a movie about visionaries, revolutionaries and eccentrics, yes, but also great craftspeople.”
The Seed of the Sacred Fig director Mohammad Rasoulof
With his film winning a nomination for Best International Feature, director Mohammad Rasoulof spoke about the sacrifices his team of filmmakers made to get this movie made.
“Everyone involved in the film has been charged with propaganda against the Islamic Republic [of Iran] and spreading corruption and prostitution,” he said. “But I think the regime is waiting for the outcome of the Oscars before pronouncing the judgment, because they don’t want to attract major international news attention.”
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Walter Salles directed powerful Brazilian film I’m Still Here, which achieves the rare double of being nominated for both Best Picture and Best International Feature.
More importantly, he told us, it speaks to the country at a pivotal moment: “As we started to write it, it felt like we would be offering a reflection of the years that Brazil went through. And then, little by little, the present caught up with us.
“It’s something that we didn’t anticipate. We came very close to a moment where what the film describes could happen again. That informed the whole family of the film. The actors, the DP, the editor, the grip – everybody was conscious that this was about the past, but also about the kind of present we wanted to be part of.”
The story of one of this year’s surprise movie hits, Sing Sing, is both uplifting and a reminder that access to the arts can be genuinely life-changing. Just ask actor Clarence Maclin, who plays a fictionalised version of himself opposite Best Actor nominee Colman Domingo in the film.
Sing Sing charts Clarence ‘Divine Eye’ Maclin’s transformation from one of the most feared inmates in one of the toughest prisons in the US to a sensitive and skilled stage performer thanks to Sing Sing Correctional Facility’s Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) programme.
While he, perhaps surprisingly, missed out on a Best Supporting Actor nod for his big screen debut, Maclin did bag a nomination in the Best Adapted Screenplay category as one of the story creators, alongside writers Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar.
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Clarence Maclin (facing camera) with Sing Sing co-star Colman Domingo – both are nominated at The Oscars. Image: Dominic Leon
Maclin told us: “The most identifiable part of being a convicted prisoner inside America is the uniform identifying you as such. So I was very apprehensive about putting that back on and stepping back into prisons that I actually was in during my incarceration.
“But the purpose of what we were doing outweighed the apprehension. We wanted to keep it genuine to what we all experienced in the RTA program. We wanted to show how we changed that space from being a prison to a safe space – the film demonstrates what the possibilities are if we focus on programming and therapy rather than punishment.”
Kwedar added: “Becoming teachers on the RTA program was a transformational process for us. It felt like a secret that had been kept from the world. We’re all aware that prison is not a place anyone wants to spend any time in. But what the world doesn’t know is this magical, transformative process that can unfold through reconnecting with the artists inside us.
“And the results are staggering. We are the most incarcerated country in the world. The recidivism rate of people returning to prison within five years of release is over 60% in our country. But less than 3% of graduates of this RTA programme ever go back inside.”
Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
The continued brilliance Wallace and Gromit, 35 years after A Grand Day Out launched the hapless inventor and his super-smart canine sidekick on an unsuspecting world, has been rewarded with another nomination for Best Animated Feature.
Aardman founder and Wallace and Gromit creator Nick Park told us: “When I first started with A Grand Day Out at college, it was just a daft thing. Even the names were stupid ones I thought up as a student and now they’re household names. It’s unexpected.
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Wallace and Gromit in Vengeance Most Fowl. Image: BBC/Aardman Animations Ltd 2024/Richard Davies
“As long as your characters are good and your stories are compelling, then in one sense the medium doesn’t matter – but I think in our case, it really does matter. With clay, you restrict yourself. There’s something about the character animation that brings with it a certain humour and a kind of irony because it’s clay. We’re creating a massive villain but he’s that big,” he added, holding up his fingers a few inches apart. “Total freedom doesn’t help.”
