If you happen to’ve watched the Display Actors Guild Awards over time, you’ve heard the title of the prize numerous instances, even when it hasn’t fairly 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 title of the statuette and streamline the present’s title, the Display Actors Guild Awards introduced Friday that it’s renaming the ceremony to the Actor Awards. Or, if you wish to get exact (and a bit verbose): the Actor Awards introduced 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 lengthy been a dependable precursor to the Oscars on the awards season calendar, with final yr being an exception. (Chalamet, Moore and “Conclave,” winner of the guild’s finest image equal, the ensemble honor, didn’t repeat their SAG successes.)
Because the occasion moved to Netflix in 2024 from TNT and TBS, viewership numbers have elevated, besting pre-pandemic ranges. Final yr, per Netflix, the ceremony acquired 4.3 million views on the platform.
That’s a far cry from simply 4 years in the past, when the pandemic pressured ceremonies to postpone and shuffle dates, and the Grammys thought nothing of touchdown on the SAG Awards’ unique 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 govt 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 phrase: actors. Just like the Golden Globes, the Actor Awards (we’ll simply begin calling it that now, attempting it out for measurement) reward lead and supporting performances in films and tv, and, in lieu of “best picture” or “best series,” prizes for appearing ensembles. In contrast to the Golden Globes, the ceremony has not been beset by scandal or raised questions on unethical self-dealing.
Nominations for the Actor Awards are chosen by two nominating committees, one for movie and one for tv, comprising 2,500 SAG-AFTRA members which might be randomly chosen annually. Winners are then chosen by lively SAG-AFTRA members, a large voting physique numbering greater 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 dwell on Netflix on March 1. Nominations can be introduced on Jan. 7.
