Zoe Saldaña and the Emilia Pérez crew made waves through our 2024 movie schedule, snagging plenty of nominations already. And while the Guardians of the Galaxy actress is celebrating these nods for the musical thriller, she brought an important conversation to the award show circuit and the continuous hotly debated snub conversation. She reveals that it’s discouraging that Avatar and other movies like it are continuing to be snubbed by acting categories.
Saldaña shared with Variety about her Netflix hit, her frustrations with Hollywood not recognizing motion capture–a big con for big sci-fi franchises, amongst other parts of her career. The 46-year-old shared her feelings on the institution’s classic ruling about not recognizing those roles and how being overlooked is the worst part of everything:
Old habits die hard, and when you have old establishments, it’s really hard to bring forward change. And I understand that, so I’m not bitter about it, but it is quite deflating when you give 120% of yourself into something. I mean, not winning is ok, not being nominated is ok, but when you’re overlooked and then minimized and completely disregarded
The Special Ops: Lioness actress has a great perspective on it but maybe an even better thought on the whole not recognizing motion capture roles. No performer in any one of those movies is just phoning it in–in fact, they are probably exerting more effort than in a typical role. And this is coming from someone who has never seen Avatar (which is streaming with a Disney+ subscription). In fact, Saldaña has encouraged me to add heavily motion capture movies to my list because of the effort that she says goes into these franchises and films.
She’s not the only one to weigh in on the specific topic, her Avatar director, James Cameron had many similar sentiments about the category ruling. He also shared of Saldaña’s range and what a talent she is to work with.
I’ve worked with Academy Award-winning actors, and there’s nothing that Zoe’s doing that’s of a caliber less than that. But because in my film she’s playing a ‘CG character,’ it kind of doesn’t count in some way, which makes no sense to me whatsoever. She can go from regal to, in two nanoseconds, utterly feral. The woman is ferocious. She is a freaking lioness.
I think that many should take note of the science fiction epic director’s words. As one of the best in the biz and more than plenty of experience, it seems like there’s a change coming. Especially since Avatar: Fire and Ash will premiere on our 2025 movie schedule, it seems like they are paving the way for these performers to get recognized. I think it’s smart, and hope that the institutions at the very least add new categories to recognize this media because it’s not going anywhere.
For now, we’ll have to wait and see what becomes of the conversation. In the meantime, there are plenty of upcoming award shows waiting for us on our 2025 TV schedule. I’m sure that Saldaña will relish this award season with the Emilia Pérez cast and crew and hope for the best with Avatar in the acting award categories.
The Oscars are on March 2nd at 7:00 PM and will be streaming live for the first time with a Hulu subscription or live on ABC. They are also streamable the following day with a Hulu account.
