"Bilal Baig should have been nominated for an acting award. The awards are split by gender. Well, that door needs to be open sooner or later." — this blog, February 15, 2022
We are calling this the Bilal Baig (Sort Of) move, yet we know other actors will benefit from this Canadian Screen Awards decision by the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television.
The film side will have awards for performance in a leading role and performance in a supporting role. The TV awards will have awards for lead and supporting performances in the drama and comedy categories as well as an award for best performance in a TV movie.
Best Guest Performance for drama and comedy in the Canadian Screen Awards has previously had 5 nominees, inclusive of everyone. The CSAs digital media performance categories have been gender-neutral since 2019.
2022 Canadian Screen Awards nominations: Television
The Film Independent Spirit Awards announced a similar move last week. There will be a Best Lead Performance (10 nominees) and Best Supporting Performance (10 nominees). The Canadian Screen Awards will have 8 nominees instead of 5.
That means 2 fewer actors will get the honour of being a Canadian Screen Awards nominee.
If you think back to this spring when Hamza Haq and Laurence Leboeuf won for Transplant, only one of them would win in 2023. There is also a concern that male-identified actors might get more of the nominees than female-identified actors.
The Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA), the national union for professionals in English-language recorded media, renamed its categories: one for people who are gender non-conforming or male, and one for people who are gender non-conforming or female.
Our CanadianCrossing.com style guide notes that the word "actor" is always used, unless a different word is used in the name of the award.
CanadianCrossing.com Canadian TV coverage
CanadianCrossing.com television coverage
Included in this announcement is the transition to gender-neutral performance categories for lead and supporting performers in the film and television awards streams.
— The Canadian Academy (@TheCdnAcademy) August 25, 2022
Learn more about this change here: https://t.co/uVfWGOlMzc
We think this is a marvelous move, critiques included. The nominees can draw us to a project we otherwise might not have considered, which is why 10 is better than 8. Sort Of had a lot of significant nominations last season but the lead actor didn't have that chance to shine. The idea that Bilal Baig and other similar people having to choose a category that didn't fit them or, even worse, having someone randomly pick a column for that person: that is not where we should be.
We will have to wait to see the results until spring 2023.
photo credit: Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television
Twitter capture: @TheCdnAcademy
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