Welcome to Critical Darlings, a conversation about the award season conversation.

One contender at a time.

Please welcome to this stage, your hosts, Richard Lawson and Alison Wilmore.

Well, thank you, Marie, for that spirited introduction, as always, but especially today.

I mean, it's exciting morning.

This is the day we've been training for all our lives.

We are at the final base camp before we summit.

We're about to have a very confusing

F-1 race in which no one knows the rules, but we're going to beat them somehow. Yeah, yeah. We're

alone in studio today. Our producer Ben Frisch is on the line in Mexico. Hello, Ben. Now, did you

decide to hide out in Mexico because as one of the lead producers of Wicked for Good, you're kind of licking your wounds? I'm deep in shame in a mescalita right now. Is Mescalita with you? Oh, also snubbed? Oh, making of snubs. Yeah. Yeah, well, he's on the other side of the beach. Oh, I see. Yeah, I take your meaning. sadly they're reciting to be or not to be as you do.

In Spanish. on the other side of the beach. Oh, I see. Yeah, I take your meaning. He's looking sadly there reciting, um, to be or not to be.

As you do.

In Spanish, though.

Yeah, just a, just a fun, though, you know. Yeah. Um, it was, it was genuinely an exciting morning. A friend texts to be right before being like, I'm so excited. And normally this for Oscar nominations morning, sometimes I'm in Sundance and it's like, you know, six in the morning or whatever.

And I'm kind of like, ugh, whatever. We already know everything. But this year I didn't know everything. And it felt great. And my sister, like, literally two minutes into like Daniel Brooks and Lewis Pullman talking, my sister called me on the phone. And I texted her and I was like, Oscar nominations are happening. What's wrong with you? And then she told me that someone had died.

But anyway, not anyone I know.

But I was like, oh, shit.

Were you excited?

I was excited.

I mean, I think there is something about this year where also there are a lot of movies that people have been talking about.

So it doesn't feel like the general public has been interested. You know, in a way that I feel lends extra energy. So there are times where, you know, you're like, oh, there are a lot of films getting nominated that are near and dear to my heart and I'm invested in this and no one cares. You know, like, you, the outside, this is so, it's too insular, the outside world is just not invested. And in this case, I feel like for better and worse, the world is watching, including. But not for good. Yeah, but not for good. I will say also, I feel like this, this time last week we were recording and you're like, we're like, oh, any surprises. And I was like, I think sinners is not going to get any traction. I'm just getting bad vibes feelings when things are going. So never let me talk about vibes again because clearly radar is very old. Record-breaking amount of nominations, 16, which blows past Titanic, all about Eve. There's one other in there. But that's huge and huger... La Land.

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