The Screen Actors Guild jst wrapped up their 2021 awards ceremony. Let’s see who got snubbed this time. Photo from celebrityaccess.com.
The virtual Screen Actors Guild Awards held on April 4 marked the end of the 2021 awards season for television, and despite the pandemic, the past year has produced great works that deserved to be rewarded one last time.
The SAG Awards stand out as a ceremony that rewards only actors, who are nominated and voted on by their peers, members of the union SAG-AFTRA. With a year full of virtual awards, SAG chose to go a different route by pre-recording the hour-long ceremony, meaning the winners were notified days before when their speeches were made. However, this isn’t something that viewers would have necessarily picked up on if they hadn’t already known.
Having it pre-recorded allowed for a smooth-running ceremony, along with the lack of host. Instead, bits came from presenters, who were asked questions off-screen and answered them in between the giving out of awards and commercial breaks. Viewers got to see embarrassing old headshots of Sterling K. Brown and Josh Gad while also learning that Helen Mirren loved “The Queen’s Gambit” and “PEN15.” This gave the awards a casual vibe and reminded us that it is solely about the actors and their projects.
It was a historic year for film, with all four of the winners in the main acting categories being people of color — Viola Davis, Chadwick Boseman, Daniel Kaluuya and Youn Yuh-jung.
As for television, the winners followed a trend that was set by previous awards, with “The Crown” and “Schitt’s Creek” dominating. Netflix, unsurprisingly, had a big night with wins for Anya Taylor-Joy, Gillian Anderson, the ensemble of “The Crown” and Jason Bateman for “Ozark.” Bateman somewhat upset Josh O’Connor, who has won all previous major awards for his role as Prince Charles, but either way, it still would have been a win for Netflix. After six seasons, “Schitt’s Creek” was finally able to claim their first Actors with wins for Catherine O’Hara and their acting ensemble. To round out the television winners, Mark Ruffalo and Jason Sudeikis added awards to their collections for their roles in “I Know This Much Is True” and “Ted Lasso” respectively.
Something I really appreciated was the introduction of the nominees of each category. The presenter would read out a glowing almost-review-like statement about the actor’s work. It was a joy to hear Rita Moreno say, “and when it comes to funny, you just cannot beat Catherine O’Hara. Period.” It also served to remind the viewers that while there’s always going to be winners and losers, 2020 was still a great year of television.
The eligibility period for nominees began on Jan. 1, 2020 and ended Feb. 28 of this year, allowing for shows like “Bridgerton” and “The Flight Attendant” to garner nominations while also providing as a last hurrah for “Schitt’s Creek” and this cast of “The Crown,” who will be replaced in the show’s final two seasons.
As someone who (generally) enjoys television more than movies and believes that streaming and the rise of mini-series in recent years has brought us some of the best television work in history, it was bittersweet to see this part of awards season end. As someone who also had a lot of time on my hands earlier in the pandemic, television was a great outlet for me personally. While rewatching old favorites or starting classics that I’d never gotten around to was a treat, having shows continue to air and be released provided a nice sense of familiarity and normalcy as everything was changing. This awards season has been unconventional to say the least, but what has remained the same is that there’s been an abundance of great work to be recognized.
As the new eligibility season has already begun, my question is what the next awards season will look like. It’s one thing for shows filmed before or wrapping up at the start of the pandemic to thrive, but with new regulations put in place and filming delays, how will the 2021-22 crop of television shows compare? I guess we’ll have to wait for the next SAG Awards.