Sunday night at the Academy Awards, horror broke out in a big, big way. Thanks to four awards for the vampire-centric Sinners, three for the classic adaptation Frankenstein, and one for the chilling Weapons, horror won eight awards on the night, crushing the previous record of five, set by The Silence of the Lambs way back in 1992.
But out of those wins, Madigan’s stands out for a few reasons. First and foremost, Weapons wasn’t nominated for anything else on the evening. Sinners won four out of 16 nominations (including Best Actor for Michael B. Jordan), and Frankenstein won three out of nine nominations. Each, while obviously worthy, had many more chances at gold. In fact, a solo nominee hadn’t won Best Supporting Actress in almost two decades. You have to go back to 2008, when Penelope Cruz won for Vicky Cristina Barcelona.
It gets better. Even more impressive than that, Madigan’s win for Weapons is the first horror villain performance to win an Oscar since Anthony Hopkins’ for The Silence of the Lambs back in 1992. Then, Kathy Bates won Best Actress for Misery in 1991.
Before that, you have to go back to the 1969 Oscars and Ruth Gordon winning Best Supporting Actress in Rosemary’s Baby. Basically, in the past 60 or so years, only a handful of people have won Oscars for playing horror villains, and only two have been the sole nominees from their respective films: Bates for Misery and now Madigan for Weapons.
And though Madigan’s instantly iconic character, Aunt Gladys, dies in a fittingly violent and disgusting way in the film, we may not have seen the last of her. Writer-director Zach Creeger originally had a full chapter of the film dedicated to Gladys’ origins, but it was cut for length and never filmed. However, in the wake of the film’s success, there has been much talk of Cregger going back to and expanding that chapter. And, though Madigan isn’t quite sure if it’s going to happen, she’s game if it does.
“It’s not that I discount it, but in this business, nothing’s real till it’s real,” Madigan said last year. “I just had such a great time working with Zach and being inside that brain of his. That’s really the gift of how the movie came out. The other stuff has to do with all sorts of conversations that I would never be privy [to] and business things like that. But, you know, I love Gladys, so I’ll leave it at that.”
So do we, and so did the Academy. Because, let’s also not forget this.
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