Oscars frontrunner Jessie Buckley has insisted that she is definitively pro-cat, after a story about a pet-based ultimatum she once gave her now-husband went viral earlier this week. The Hamnet actor and I’d Do Anything finalist appeared on US TV last night and set the record straight.
For those who missed the feline furore, a three-month-old clip from her appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast resurfaced in recent days, right as the voting period for the 98th Academy Awards came to a close.
Appearing alongside Paul Mescal, her Hamnet co-star, she could be seen saying: “My husband [Freddie Sorensen], when I started dating him, he had two cats… This is bad as well. I’m gonna get cancelled.
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“One of the cats was like a pedigree model bitch, and she staged a coup against me. I’d come home, and there’d just be poo on my pillow. And I was like, ‘it’s me or the cats’. But I won!”
After the footage circulated, she light-heartedly explained on Thursday’s episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon: “I need to clarify something for all cat lovers in the world: I am a lover of cats.
“I woke up this morning to the world thinking that I really don’t love cats. And it’s really weighed on me all day. I felt sick! I wanna just tell cat people, that I actually auditioned to be a cat once… There’s been a [misconception].”
Confirming that she tried out for Tom Hooper’s film adaptation of Cats, she said: “I gave the worst audition of my life… how do you be a cat?”
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The Oscars take place on 15 March, and Buckley will be going into it as the clear frontrunner for Best Actress in a Leading Role, having picked up the equivalent prize at the BAFTAs, the Actor Awards (formerly the SAG Awards), the Critics’ Choice Awards and the Golden Globes.
Other contenders in the category are Rose Byrne for If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, Emma Stone for Bugonia, Kate Hudson for Song Sung Blue and Renate Reinsve for Sentimental Value.
Hamnet is still showing in select cinemas, and is also available to buy or rent from Prime Video and AppleTV in the UK.
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Shaun is an Evening News Editor at Digital Spy, with over a decade of experience reporting on all things pop culture. He has written for outlets including Metro, Attitude, Huffington Post, The Mirror, Yahoo!, Pink News and Express Online; specialising in TV, movies, soaps, music and LGBTQ+ issues. He is also a BAFTA Rocliffe-winning scriptwriter, having written episodes of the soap Hollyoaks, the official Steps musical Here & Now and multiple Offie Award-nominated plays. He studied English Literature and Drama at the University of East Anglia, and will happily talk at length about Desperate Housewives to anyone who’ll listen.