{"id":217351,"date":"2026-01-05T05:31:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T05:31:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/217351\/"},"modified":"2026-01-05T05:31:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T05:31:07","slug":"2026-critics-choice-awards-snubs-and-surprises-jacob-elordi-and-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/217351\/","title":{"rendered":"2026 Critics Choice Awards snubs and surprises: Jacob Elordi and more"},"content":{"rendered":"

Even with plenty of results going exactly as predicted, the 2026 Critics Choice Awards<\/a> still managed to keep everyone on their toes Sunday night. The first televised awards show of the year gave the Oscar race a jolt of fresh intrigue, as the 31st annual ceremony reminded us how quickly momentum can flip. Sure, established juggernauts like One Battle After Another<\/a> and Sinners<\/a> collected their expected haul \u2014 but a handful of key upsets have officially reshuffled the Oscar conversation. <\/p>\n

TV delivered a few curveballs of its own, too, even if those categories felt a bit like an epilogue after September\u2019s Emmys. From surprise acting triumphs to craft wins that blindsided the pundits, these were the biggest snubs and surprises of the night.<\/p>\n

\"SANTA<\/a> \"'Kpop<\/a> <\/p>\n

SURPRISE: Jacob Elordi<\/a> wins Best Supporting Actor for Frankenstein<\/p>\n

Looks like\u00a0Frankenstein\u00a0wasn\u2019t just one creature feature after another for CCA voters. Elordi\u2019s performance\u00a0as the not-so-good doctor\u2019s very verbal monster<\/a>\u00a0was the upset victor for Best Supporting Actor, finishing ahead of the\u00a0One Battle After Another\u00a0duo of\u00a0Benicio Del Toro\u00a0and\u00a0Sean Penn, as well as\u00a0Sentimental Value\u2019s\u00a0Stellan Skarsg\u00e5rd. Consider the\u00a0Euphoria\u00a0star\u2019s Oscar hopes to be officially\u2026\u00a0alive! For what it\u2019s worth, the Critics Choice winner in this category has gone on to an Oscar nomination every year for three decades, and the last nine consecutive winners have parlayed this trophy into an Oscar win.<\/p>\n

SNUB: It Was Just an Accident<\/p>\n

After a slew of early wins at the\u00a0Gotham Awards<\/a>, the\u00a0New York Film Critics Circle<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0National Board of Review<\/a>,\u00a0Jafar Panahi\u2019s Cannes-winning drama missed out on winning its one and only CCA category for Best Foreign Language Film.\u00a0The Secret Agent<\/a>\u00a0nabbed that statuette instead,\u00a0reflecting the Brazilian movie\u2019s undeniable surge<\/a>\u00a0in the recent weeks.<\/p>\n

SURPRISE: Train Dreams<\/a> wins Best Cinematography<\/p>\n

Sinners\u00a0was heavily favored in our odds to scoop up the Best Cinematography prize, but\u00a0Adolpho Veloso\u2019s evocative, emotional lensing of\u00a0Clint Bentley\u2019s elegiac frontier yarn inched ahead with CCA voters. In fact, many of those same voters rushed the\u00a0Train Dreams\u00a0table to congratulate Veloso on his victory.<\/p>\n

SURPRISE: F1 wins Best Editing<\/p>\n

On paper, One Battle After Another had this locked \u2014 it led the odds and looked like the kind of prestige contender Critics Choice voters usually gravitate toward. But anyone who\u2019s watched even five minutes of F1 should\u2019ve seen this coming. The show\u2019s blister-fast racetrack sequences and razor-sharp montage work have been a technical standout all season. In hindsight, the upset feels almost inevitable: when your editing literally makes hearts race, voters tend to notice.<\/p>\n

SURPRISE: Janelle James wins Best Comedy Supporting Actress for Abbott Elementary<\/p>\n

Hannah Einbinder won the Emmy in September, Hacks is a critics\u2019 darling, and this race felt like an afterthought. Cut to Janelle James storming the stage for her first Critics Choice win after four consecutive nominations for Abbott Elementary. The scene-stealer pulled off the comedic upset of the night, toppling the heavy favorite with a deserving performance that voters clearly couldn\u2019t resist.<\/p>\n

SURPRISE: Sarah Snook wins Best Limited\/Movie Actress for All Her Fault<\/p>\n

Apparently Sarah Snook decided she\u2019s not done collecting hardware. The Succession Emmy winner \u2014 who already holds two Critics Choice Awards<\/a> \u2014 extended her awards-season hot streak with a surprise victory for Peacock\u2019s All Her Fault, surpassing odds leader Michelle Williams (Dying for Sex). Snook\u2019s chilling, tightly coiled performance has been gaining steam for weeks, and this win could officially rocket her to frontrunner status heading into the Golden Globes, where she\u2019s nominated again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Even with plenty of results going exactly as predicted, the 2026 Critics Choice Awards still managed to keep…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":217352,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[131133,4132,430,102228,156,4134,13271,111,139,69,26870,2584,82064,42421,54599],"class_list":{"0":"post-217351","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-2026-critics-choice-awards","9":"tag-2026-oscars","10":"tag-celebrities","11":"tag-critics-choice-awards","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-fyc","14":"tag-jacob-elordi","15":"tag-new-zealand","16":"tag-newzealand","17":"tag-nz","18":"tag-one-battle-after-another","19":"tag-oscars","20":"tag-sinners","21":"tag-the-secret-agent","22":"tag-train-dreams"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217351\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/217352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}