‘Wicked’ could join this rare group of Best Picture Oscar winners with two female main characters
In much the same way that Elphaba soars through the sky while singing “Defying Gravity,” “Wicked” has taken off in the Oscar Best Picture race. According to Gold Derby’s combined odds, the musical sensation ranks in the top five behind “Anora,” “The Brutalist,” “Conclave,” and “Emilia Pérez,” with nowhere to go but up after receiving four Golden Globe nominations. Should “Wicked” prevail on Oscar night, it would join a short list of winners that feature two female main characters, which has happened less frequently than you’d think.
Adapted from Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman’s Tony-winning Broadway smash, “Wicked” centers on the friendship between green-skinned misfit Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) and popular girl Glinda (Ariana Grande), who later become the Wicked Witch and the Good Witch, respectively. Funnily enough, the last Best Picture winner centered on two women was another musical adaptation, 2002’s “Chicago.”
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Although Catherine Zeta-Jones won the Best Supporting Actress prize for playing murderous showgirl Velma Kelly, Golden Globe voters considered her enough of a lead that they placed her in that category alongside her co-star (and cinematic cellmate), Renée Zellweger. (It’s an even more apt comparison considering Erivo and Grande are currently predicted to compete in the lead and supporting races, respectively.)
One Best Picture victor that did have competing lead actress was “Terms of Endearment,” the 1983 weepie about a domineering mother (Shirley MacLaine) and her free-spirited daughter (Debra Winger). Prior to that, you have to go all the way back to 1950’s “All About Eve” to find another Oscar champ with dueling Best Actress contenders. That backstage drama about an aging stage diva (Bette Davis) and her conniving understudy (Anne Baxter) earned a record-setting 14 bids, taking home six prizes. While MacLaine prevailed in the mother-daughter showdown against Winger, both Davis and Baxter lost to Judy Holliday in “Born Yesterday.”
The earliest female two-hander to prevail at the Oscars was the second winner in history (and the first musical), 1929’s “The Broadway Melody.” That Pre-Code songfest told an age-old tale of two sisters (Bessie Love and Anita Page) trying to make it in show business. Although there were no official nominees announced that year, Love was under consideration for Best Actress.
The case can be made for Best Picture champs like “Everything Everywhere All at Once” (2022) to fall into this category, since most of it centers on the fractured relationship between a mother (lead actress winner Michelle Yeoh) and her daughter (supporting nominee Stephanie Hsu). You could stretch it even further to include winners like “Gone with the Wind” (1939), “Rebecca” (1940), and “Mrs. Miniver” (1942), although at that point the rubber band might snap. It just goes to show how rare it is for the Academy to embrace movies centered on the dynamics between women. It might take some magic fairy dust to awaken voters from the slumber they’ve apparently been in since “Chicago” and remind them that from time to time a Best Picture winner can include more than one female lead.
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