2023’s weirdest Oscar campaign is Andrea Riseborough’s celebrity social media buzz for ‘To Leslie’

low budget indie drama to Leslie It’s currently garnering a staggering amount of buzz from the A-list actor, because until last week, very few people had even heard of the film.

to Leslie Andrea Riseborough is a quick money squander, struggling with poverty and addiction as a lottery-winning single mother. Although it was well received when it was released last October (averaging an excellent 85% rating on Metacritic), it grossed only about $23,000 at the box office and placed on the notable Best of the Year list. I didn’t check in.

Basically, the film is pretty vague. Or celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow, Jane Fonda, Kate Winslet, and Jennifer Aniston started promoting it on Twitter and Instagram, Sponsored screening Andrea Riseborough campaigns to win an Oscar. to Leslie To the point where social media audiences started taking notice of this out of nowhere Oscar campaign, it seems to be very popular with middle-aged white female actresses.

According to IMDb’s Oscar prediction blog Gold Derby, Riseborough currently ranks eighth on the list of leading actress contenders. Considering her name wasn’t visibly contested a few weeks ago, this is pretty wild.

This impromptu campaign may seem strange, but if you’re familiar with Andrea Riseborough’s career, it’s easy to understand why people want her to get Oscar attention. He has amassed an astonishingly diverse body of work, and has been lauded for leading intense and unusual indie dramas and playing supporting roles in more mainstream projects. She may not be as famous as she is, but her critics love her. Obviously, so do other actors.

With that said, it’s still weird to see a crowd of A-listers spontaneously transform to Leslie The publicity department for the film caused a rather satirical response from Twitter:

The problem is that bots and fandoms are accustomed to seeing astroturfing campaigns spamming Twitter with countless similar messages and creating distrust around the topic of Andrea Riseborough. But this campaign will not be as conspiratorial as people suspect.

These celebrities, like any other community, come together to support their friends and colleagues. to Lesliedirector Michael Morris said. hollywood reporter Last week, “I can’t even afford to advertise.” Honestly, aside from praise from people like Charlize Theron and Sarah Paulson, the film hasn’t received much publicity, so that’s easy to believe.

The main difference between this and the “regular” Oscars campaign is that it’s more obvious to casual viewers. Generally, actors attend film festivals and previous awards ceremonies, give chat shows and magazine interviews, and chat at industry events, making it difficult to get acting nominations without months of groundwork. It’s an expensive and time-consuming project, and you can see the impact it has had on this year’s leading contenders. All at once, anywhereto the studio fee Elvis.

Smaller and lesser-hyped films in comparison to Leslie An awards season underdog, even when everyone in Hollywood seems to be on their side.

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