Sterling K. Brown has plenty of trophies. He’s even one of those actors who has their own awards page on Wikipedia. This year, though, he finally got his first Oscar nomination. It’s for his scene-stealing turn as the unpredictable brother to Jeffrey Wright’s disgruntled novelist in American Fiction, and he’s great in it. But there’s one person who thinks Brown won’t win: himself. In fact he even predicted who he’s going to lose to, about which he’s fine.
“I’mma tell you: Robert Downey Jr.’s gonna win, and he’s incredibly deserving. He’s an incredible actor. Like, you should give him love,” Brown said during an appearance on The Graham Norton Show. “The fact that I get a chance to be nominated along with him and Mr. [Robert] De Niro and Ryan Gosling and [Mark] Ruffalo… I’m just happy to be in the room.”
Downey, of course, is nominated for his intense work in Oppenheimer, in which he played hissable antagonist Lewis Strauss, the man partly responsible for pettily ending our hero’s security clearance and arguably making the future a more dangerous place. It’s only his third-ever nomination, his first since 1992’s Chaplin. Yes, he really wasn’t nominated for Zodiac. Or Wonder Boys. Or Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. But he was nominated for Tropic Thunder, playing a pompous actor who has his skin dyed black to play a Black character.
Elsewhere during his Graham Norton Show appearance, Brown made another prediction: that Colman Domingo, nominated for the civil rights era biopic Rustin, may trounce Paul Giamatti, Bradley Cooper, Cillian Murphy, and Jeffrey Wright.
“Colman will probably win,” Brown said. “I know that I’m not going to win.”
Prove him wrong, AMPAS, at least about himself! The Oscars are set to take place on March 10. You can watch the full Graham Norton Show episode below.
(Via Entertainment Weekly)
