The 30th Screen Actors Guild Awards has come to a close, and it’s looking exactly like the whispers have been drawing it up as the Oscars draw closer and closer. Indeed, with Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s win for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role, Lily Gladstone receiving the award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role, and Oppenheimer winning just about anything else in the film category, it seems like the SAG Award voters have quite the overlap with the Academy when it comes to choosing who gets the statuette, assuming those Oscars prophecies end up coming true.
And now that the ceremony has ended, it is of course the perfect time to learn more about exactly what we just watched. To start off, who exactly gets to vote for these immensely talented people?
How are SAG Awards decided?
As alluded to by Oppenheimer‘s Cillian Murphy in his acceptance speech for the Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role Award, anyone who has full union membership in SAG-AFTRA may cast their votes for the SAG Awards. In other words, the SAG Awards is a ceremony where actors honor actors.
To break it down even further, the nominees are decided by a randomly selected committee numbering 4,200 union members (2,100 for television and 2,100 for film) each year. These nominees can then, of course, be voted for by the SAG-AFTRA union members, and whoever gets the most votes in their category wins the award.
Okay, so maybe that last bit was a given, but there’s nothing wrong with having all your bases covered. And we do, in fact, got ’em covered.