THB #310: Riseborough: The Drama

I lost a writing day to Twitter and the “discussion” of The Academy and Best Actrees nominee Andrea Riseborough.

I put “discussion” in parentheses because this is one of those areas where there seems to be a lot of position-taking and not a lot on conversation.

To start with, I have not seen a single claim that strongly suggests that Team Riseborough - which appears to have been led by the wife of To Leslie’s director Michael Morris, Mary McCormack - actually cheated in any way. What claims that there are floating around are all rather ticky-tacky, more looking for a way to declare the effort to get Riseborough nominated “cheating” rather than really having a reasonable argument that there was intentional, situation-changing bad behavior.

At the same time, the entire issue has taken on an aggressively racial tone based on the assumption, grounded on the guessing of pundits, that a Black actress (either Viola Davis or Danielle Deadwyler) would have been nominated had Ms. Riseborough not…