How the Oscars went quiet on Trump

{"text":[[{"start":8.030000000000001,"text":"Why is no one talking about Donald Trump? "},{"start":10.822,"text":"The question could only come from a place of escapism: the movies. "},{"start":14.652000000000001,"text":"At Sunday’s Oscars, Best Actor nominees include Sebastian Stan, who plays the man who would be president in biopic The Apprentice. "},{"start":21.982,"text":"He is joined by Jeremy Strong, the Succession star up for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as Roy Cohn, the early Trump’s infamous legal fixer. "}],[{"start":30.62,"text":"And yet the pair and their film are awards-season bystanders. "},{"start":34.237,"text":"Neither will win. "},{"start":35.629000000000005,"text":"Nor did they ever have a chance. "}],[{"start":38.39,"text":"Delayed by the Los Angeles wildfires, the Oscar nominations were finally announced on January 23. "},{"start":44.757,"text":"By then, it was three days after the presidential inauguration, watched from the VIP seats by Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg. "},{"start":53.499,"text":"Compared with the ring-kissing of the tech moguls, the honouring of Stan and Strong felt like notable dissent — not least with observers already asking what place the cluster of studios and streamers once known as Hollywood would have in the US of Trump 2.0. "}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":67.43,"text":"If you haven’t seen The Apprentice, you may not know quite how unflattering it is. "},{"start":71.759,"text":"Set mostly in the 1970s, it depicts a young Trump learning all he knows from the venal Cohn, lawyer to disgraced senator Joseph McCarthy and the mob. "},{"start":80.277,"text":"Trump is also portrayed as a business incompetent, and as the rapist of his then wife Ivana Trump (an alleged incident that Ivana ultimately recanted and he has denied as “obviously false”). "}],[{"start":90.69000000000001,"text":"So why have the film’s Oscar nominations been met with silence from the White House? "},{"start":95.19400000000002,"text":"Maybe the answer is as simple as Trump already having said his piece. "},{"start":98.799,"text":"After The Apprentice premiered at Cannes last May, legal action was threatened. "},{"start":102.77900000000001,"text":"A 1am social media post following the US release in October read: “HUMAN SCUM”. "}],[{"start":108.33000000000001,"text":"Nevertheless, it is surprising to find the Academy unravaged. "},{"start":112.32200000000002,"text":"No previous version of Trump would have let the insult stand. "},{"start":115.70200000000001,"text":"You suspect, if pressed, the line would be that no one now cares enough about the awards to merit the effort. "},{"start":121.69400000000002,"text":"The Sadly Irrelevant Oscars Have Been Failing Horribly For Many Years, and so on. "},{"start":126.49900000000001,"text":"As can sometimes be the case with Trump, there is an awkward nugget of truth in that. "}],[{"start":131.77,"text":"At this point in the first Trump presidency, the 2017 Oscars were defined by the out-of-nowhere success of Moonlight, Barry Jenkins’ electric story of Black boyhood in Miami. "},{"start":141.562,"text":"By contrast, the 2025 Oscars will probably go down as a grim parade of grubby controversies in which Trump is the only divisive subject not under discussion. "}],[{"start":150.88,"text":"Amid the mad acceleration of the news cycle and social media, you might have seen the occasional red carpet antic from Timothée Chalamet, star of Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, or wondered if you really had a free 215 minutes to watch postwar refugee epic The Brutalist. "},{"start":165.87199999999999,"text":"The ill health of Pope Francis has put a sad spotlight on Vatican succession drama Conclave. "},{"start":170.939,"text":"But what has caused the biggest stir by far has been the rancour and recrimination around several leading films. "}],[{"start":177.23,"text":"Much of it surrounded Best Picture nominee Emilia Pérez — a lurid musical about a narco cartel leader who transitions to a woman, pushed heavily enough by Netflix to win 13 nominations. "},{"start":187.922,"text":"That was before the long, noisy furore sparked by crass historical social media posts about Islam and more from star Karla Sofía Gascón. "},{"start":195.927,"text":"A public death spiral ensued. "}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":198.42999999999998,"text":"But other nominees would also be besmirched. "},{"start":201.159,"text":"For Anora, about a New York sex worker romancing a Russian oligarch’s son, the problem was shooting without an “intimacy co-ordinator” of the kind that has become industry standard in the wake of #MeToo. "},{"start":211.36399999999998,"text":"Grandiose epic The Brutalist then caused dismay when found to have been made with the help of AI. "},{"start":216.207,"text":"This week, The Apprentice itself finally became the subject of a scandal, with director Ali Abbasi accused of groping an actor at an awards party. "}],[{"start":224.95,"text":"The anti-“woke” brigade will no doubt howl with laughter. "},{"start":228.32899999999998,"text":"Alleged incontinent behaviour from Abbasi puts the cherry on an already delicious cake. "},{"start":232.99699999999999,"text":"To many conservatives, Hollywood has long been a byword for liberal cant. "},{"start":237.164,"text":"Some on the left will be wishing for more vocal Hollywood opposition, but in the past that has only pushed voters to the right. "}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":244.13,"text":"For that constituency, it will be sweet poetic justice that issues of identity and #MeToo could end up as weapons turned back on Hollywood. "},{"start":251.897,"text":"For the past decade, the Academy has tried desperately to be a model for corporate diversity. "},{"start":256.952,"text":"How much notice the studios ever took is an open question. "},{"start":260.157,"text":"They certainly won’t now, in a climate where a federal employee could risk their job by even observing that there is still just one film directed by a woman among 10 Best Picture nominees (Coralie Fargeat for gory Hollywood satire The Substance). "}],[{"start":273.53,"text":"Trump’s silence on the Oscars has helped starve them of much-needed oxygen, but it is easy to get carried away with the idea of him as grand bewitcher. "},{"start":281.32199999999995,"text":"The Apprentice was sidelined even before he was re-elected. "},{"start":284.652,"text":"Despite saleable stars and good reviews, every major distributor and streamer passed on it before little-known independent Briarcliff Entertainment took the bite, leaving the film without the deep pockets needed for an Oscars campaign. "}],[{"start":297,"text":"And when the market goes into hiding, the consequences are profound — the audience literally doesn’t know what it’s missing. "},{"start":303.242,"text":"The same applies to No Other Land, an acclaimed documentary about the Israeli military and a group of Palestinian villages, which no US company has released even after an Oscar nomination. "}],[{"start":313.54,"text":"It isn’t only studios choosing safety first. "},{"start":316.469,"text":"An awards campaign fixture is US TV show Actors on Actors, in which stars pair off to discuss each other’s work. "},{"start":323.074,"text":"This Oscar season, Stan was unable to take part — because no other actor would appear with him. "},{"start":328.442,"text":"“They didn’t want to talk about Donald Trump,” the producers confirmed. "}],[{"start":332.86,"text":"People tread carefully in the new America. "},{"start":335.577,"text":"A wider pattern of self-censorship is taking hold. "},{"start":338.53200000000004,"text":"Netflix recently sought to publicise new action series Zero Day while telling journalists that star Robert De Niro — playing a former president and previously an outspoken of the current one — would not answer “political” questions. "}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":350.93,"text":"The biggest actors now typically only give interviews to outlets that keep questions on message, which tends to mean not asking about the US president. "},{"start":358.547,"text":"“I don’t see how that pertains to me,” Best Actor nominee Adrien Brody told me in January when I mentioned Trump. "},{"start":364.452,"text":"He didn’t want to talk politics while promoting The Brutalist, a story of Holocaust survival and American immigration. "}],[{"start":371.23,"text":"In Hollywood, apolitical is the new look. "},{"start":374.147,"text":"Every sign suggests the film industry’s defiance has already peaked, with Stan and Strong invited to compete for a prize they can’t win. "}],[{"start":381.75,"text":"But then, the mutual hostility of Hollywood and Trump has always been exaggerated. "},{"start":386.554,"text":"In reality, Trump was a multiple Oscar night attendee until his political reinvention, while JD Vance is the first vice-president to begin the job already the subject of a lucrative Netflix biopic, Hillbilly Elegy. "},{"start":398.222,"text":"US film studios simply won’t spend time on the wrong side of power. "}],[{"start":403.13,"text":"After all, when Jeff Bezos attended the inauguration, he was already representing Amazon as an online retail giant and a movie producer. "},{"start":411.209,"text":"And among his fellow executives at other studios, it would be easy to overestimate the distaste at their Silicon Valley counterparts saluting the president. "},{"start":418.739,"text":"The truth may be closer to a wish for their own seat — should 2029 mark the start of Trump’s third term. "}],[{"start":425.55,"text":"The Academy Awards take place on March 2 "}],[{"start":429.34000000000003,"text":"Find out about our latest stories first — follow FT Weekend on Instagram and X, and sign up to receive the FT Weekend newsletter every Saturday morning "}],[{"start":437.72,"text":""}]],"url":"https://d33mkcasurz97s.cloudfront.net/album/194952-1740915401.mp3"}