The SAG Awards are changing their name: Here come the Actor Awards

If you’ve watched the Screen Actors Guild Awards implicit the years, you’ve heard the sanction of the prize countless times, adjacent if it hasn’t rather registered.

“And the Actor goes to ... Timothée Chalamet.”

“And the Actor goes to ... Demi Moore.”

“And the Actor goes to ... ‘Conclave.’”

Now, successful an effort to thin into the sanction of the statuette and streamline the show’s title, the Screen Actors Guild Awards announced Friday that it is renaming the ceremonial to the Actor Awards. Or, if you privation to get precise (and a spot verbose): the Actor Awards presented by SAG-AFTRA.

“Now that our planetary assemblage is truly growing, radical don’t ever recognize what the national sanction is,” says awards committee seat JoBeth Williams. “But ‘the Actor Awards’ they admit and they cognize they’re going to spot their favourite actors erstwhile they tune in.”

The SAG Awards person agelong been a reliable precursor to the Oscars connected the awards play calendar, with past twelvemonth being an exception. (Chalamet, Moore and “Conclave,” victor of the guild’s champion representation equivalent, the ensemble honor, did not repetition their SAG successes.)

Since the lawsuit moved to Netflix successful 2024 from TNT and TBS, viewership numbers person increased, besting pre-pandemic levels. Last year, per Netflix, the ceremonial received 4.3 cardinal views connected the platform.

That’s a acold outcry from conscionable 4 years ago, erstwhile the pandemic forced ceremonies to postpone and shuffle dates, and the Grammys thought thing of landing connected the SAG Awards’ archetypal date. (SAG-AFTRA voiced its “extreme disappointment,” past slunk disconnected to Easter Sunday for a scheduled one-hour telecast.)

“[Netflix] saw the imaginable of the amusement to truly turn an audience,” says Jon Brockett, longtime showrunner and enforcement producer. “We’re connected 190-plus countries present connected Netflix. So the simplification of the name, from a planetary perspective, should bring astir adjacent greater consciousness to recognize who we are and what we’re each about.”

Which is, successful a word: actors. Like the Golden Globes, the Actor Awards (we’ll conscionable commencement calling it that now, trying it retired for size) reward pb and supporting performances successful movies and television, and, successful lieu of “best picture” oregon “best series,” prizes for acting ensembles. Unlike the Golden Globes, the ceremonial has not been beset by ungraded oregon raised questions astir unethical self-dealing.

Nominations for the Actor Awards are chosen by 2 nominating committees, 1 for movie and 1 for television, comprising 2,500 SAG-AFTRA members that are randomly selected each year. Winners are past selected by progressive SAG-AFTRA members, a monolithic voting assemblage numbering much than 130,000.

“We are each doing what these folks up determination connected the surface do, truthful we person a beardown consciousness of what it takes to bash that and what it takes to marque it truly special,” Williams says of the awards’ voters. “The eyes of the voters are precise tuned successful to what actors do.”

The Actors Awards volition watercourse unrecorded connected Netflix connected March 1. Nominations volition beryllium announced connected Jan. 7.