There&x27;s always an Oscars villain. Guess who&x27;s wearing the crown this year. Kaitlin ReillyThu, March 12, 2026 at 11:05 PM UTC 0 Last year, Adrien Brody took home his second Academy Award for Best Actor — but not everyone watching at home was cheering. That included several friends in my group chat, who could not get over Brody tossing his (chewed!) gum to girlfriend Georgina Chapman before accepting the trophy. The overall sentiment? It should have been Timothée Chalamet's year.
There's always an Oscars villain. Guess who's wearing the crown this year.
Kaitlin ReillyThu, March 12, 2026 at 11:05 PM UTC
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Last year, Adrien Brody took home his second Academy Award for Best Actor — but not everyone watching at home was cheering. That included several friends in my group chat, who could not get over Brody tossing his (chewed!) gum to girlfriend Georgina Chapman before accepting the trophy. The overall sentiment? It should have been Timothée Chalamet's year.
Fast-forward to the 2026 Oscar race, where Chalamet is once again a Best Actor nominee, this time for his starring role in Marty Supreme, a film about a wildly ambitious young man pursuing table tennis greatness. But public discourse around Chalamet has shifted — fueled, in part, by comments the actor made about people no longer caring about ballet or opera — but also by Chalamet's perpetual visibility on the campaign trail, multiple Instagram-friendly stunts and his unabashed desire to take home the trophy.
"While public persona probably shouldn't factor in, he's just odious and has been for years," my friend Courtney said of why she doesn't want Chalamet to take home the prize this year. "I didn't think he was playing a d***head in Marty Supreme, I think he was just being himself and just swapping in ping pong for acting."
And my friend Marissa, meanwhile, thinks the actor feels "very entitled to greatness" instead of "willing to put his head down, like many of the other candidates in the Best Actor race, and continue to earn it." Another pal simply sent over a post on X mocking Chalamet's comments about opera: "Timothée Chalamet at Phantom of the Opera: BOOOOOO THIS SHOULD BE PHANTOM OF THE PING PONG."
Chalamet has become an "Oscars villain" — a term culture writer Hunter Harris wrote about in her Substack Hung Up. And he's hardly the only one to hold the title.
For Harris, so-called "Oscars villains" include people like Emilia Pérez star and Best Actress nominee Karla Sofía Gascón, who had racist tweets unearthed prior to the 2025 ceremony. The remarks soured the press tour for a musical that was already controversial. But not every Oscars villain is "morally repugnant," Harris says in a phone conversation with Yahoo. "It is sort of funny how, every year, there's one thing we can agree upon, which is 'Oh, we hate to see this person coming,'" she says. These nominees are what Harris calls "love-to-hate-them villains."
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Anne Hathaway, Timothée Chalamet, center, and Adrien Brody. (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Jennifer Graylock/FilmMagic via Getty Images, Samir Hussein/WireImage via Getty Images, Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic via Getty Images)
For example, before there was Chalamet, there was Bradley Cooper, whose earnest press tour for the 2023 film Maestro — in which he spoke about his love and admiration for Leonard Bernstein, whom he portrayed in the movie — turned off some film fans. But, as Harris says, being so effusive is also kind of part of the shtick. "I think at some point in a press cycle, you just give the same quote over and over again," Harris says. "People just get tired of the messaging."
It is interesting, Harris adds, that these days, men up for awards are receiving far more pushback for seeming to actually want the award — a PR problem ambitious women in Hollywood have dealt with forever. (It's not hard to recall all the discourse around so-called Hathahaters in the wake of Anne Hathaway's Best Supporting Actress win for Les Misérables, in which she was mocked for declaring that her dream came true upon taking the podium.)
Entertainment writer Rendy Jones of Rendy Reviews tells Yahoo that they see the same thing. "Bradley Cooper was just so passionate about the work that he did with that movie," Jones says. "The online chatter was like, 'Oh, he wants an Oscar so bad. It's turning me off to him.'"
But part of what creates these so-called villains is just the nature of the beast. If you want to win an Oscar — which the studio behind your film certainly wants you to do! — then you have to play the game. And that means being visible, and, yes, hammering home certain talking points.
Celebrity publicist Tracy Lamourie tells Yahoo that Oscar contenders are in a tricky situation, because "you never know what little line is going to go viral." Hamnet star Jessie Buckley, for example, came under fire with pet lovers for a comment she made in a November 2025 episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast about making her husband get rid of his two cats. (Some experts say Buckley's quip might cost her the Best Actress award, but she's still widely favored to win.) Though the comment predated awards season, Buckley's visibility for Hamnet and her movie The Bride led to it resurfacing.
And while Lamourie says that Oscar nominees could "not do interviews because you might make a joke about your cat," ultimately, authenticity is crucial to connect with an audience. "There are people who are just as passionate about every actor that people are angry about," she points out — but at least everyone's talking.
Source: "AOL Entertainment"
Source: Entertainment
Published: March 13, 2026 at 01:36AM on Source: MANUEL MAG
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