If you’ve watched the Screen Actors Guild Awards over the years, you’ve heard the name of the prize countless times, even if it hasn’t quite registered.
“And the Actor goes to … Timothée Chalamet.”
“And the Actor goes to … Demi Moore.”
“And the Actor goes to … ‘Conclave.’“
Now, in an effort to lean into the name of the statuette and streamline the show’s title, the Screen Actors Guild Awards announced Friday that it is renaming the ceremony to the Actor Awards. Or, if you want to get precise (and a bit verbose): the Actor Awards presented by SAG-AFTRA.
“Now that our global audience is really growing, people don’t always understand what the union name is,” says awards committee chair JoBeth Williams. “But ‘the Actor Awards’ they recognize and they know they’re going to see their favorite actors when they tune in.”
The SAG Awards have long been a reliable precursor to the Oscars on the awards season calendar, with last year being an exception. (Chalamet, Moore and “Conclave,” winner of the guild’s best picture equivalent, the ensemble honor, did not repeat their SAG successes.)
Since the event moved to Netflix in 2024 from TNT and TBS, viewership numbers have increased, besting pre-pandemic levels. Last year, per Netflix, the ceremony received 4.3 million views on the platform.
That’s a far cry from just four years ago, when the pandemic forced ceremonies to postpone and shuffle dates, and the Grammys thought nothing of landing on the SAG Awards’ original date. (SAG-AFTRA voiced its “extreme disappointment,” then slunk off to Easter Sunday for a scheduled one-hour telecast.)
“[Netflix] saw the potential of the show to really grow an audience,” says Jon Brockett, longtime showrunner and executive producer. “We’re on 190-plus countries now on Netflix. So the simplification of the name, from a global perspective, should bring about even greater awareness to understand who we are and what we’re all about.”
Which is, in a word: actors. Like the Golden Globes, the Actor Awards (we’ll just start calling it that now, trying it out for size) reward lead and supporting performances in movies and television, and, in lieu of “best picture” or “best series,” prizes for acting ensembles. Unlike the Golden Globes, the ceremony has not been beset by scandal or raised questions about unethical self-dealing.
Nominations for the Actor Awards are chosen by two nominating committees, one for film and one for television, comprising 2,500 SAG-AFTRA members that are randomly selected each year. Winners are then selected by active SAG-AFTRA members, a massive voting body numbering more than 130,000.
“We are all doing what these folks up there on the screen do, so we have a strong sense of what it takes to do that and what it takes to make it really special,” Williams says of the awards’ voters. “The eyes of the voters are very tuned in to what actors do.”
The Actors Awards will stream live on Netflix on March 1. Nominations will be announced on Jan. 7.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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