The actors’ have spoken! Year after year, Hollywood’s biggest names vote for which of their peers should be recognized for their acting efforts at the Screen Actors Guild Awards — and even the coronavirus pandemic setbacks can’t stop the 2021 show.
This year’s nominees include the late Chadwick Boseman for two films, Schitt’s Creek’s Catherine O’Hara, Bridgerton’s Regé-Jean Page and Carey Mulligan for Promising Young Woman.
The SAG Awards was initially pushed back from January 24 to March 14 amid the worldwide health crisis. It was later rescheduled for Sunday, April 4, after the 2021 Grammys changed its date to conflict with the SAGs.
“Throughout these challenging times, our industry and our union members have proven their creativity and resilience in discovering new methods of storytelling while adapting to new safety protocols and procedures,” the SAGs team wrote in a statement on its official website on January 13.
SAG-AFTRA extended the eligibility requirements, giving possible nominees a two-month extension amid the continued delays. The union also announced it was switching up how the awards show runs, cutting the broadcast from its usual three-hour length to one hour.
“We embrace that spirit as we re-imagine the SAG Awards with a one-hour special that highlights and expands on our signature ‘I am an Actor’ opening and honors the outstanding performances of the past year,” the organization’s website read earlier this year.
In order to keep the show shorter, the event will be pretaped. “We didn’t know what the year would bring in terms of where we would be in COVID, and to pretend that it was a normal year was just wrong,” SAG Awards executive producer Kathy Connell told The Hollywood Reporter on Tuesday, March 30. “And we are the union, so we wanted our members to be protected. In some instances, our members are in production bubbles, [so] we wanted to make sure we weren’t going to do anything that would prevent them from [working].”
Fellow SAG Awards executive producer Todd Milliner added: “Doing all the pretaping allows us to shape the narrative and really get to the best stuff that the actors say, and the most interesting interviews. And it’s packed full.”
Scroll down for everything you need to know about the 27th annual SAG Awards: