Jeremy Strong Oscar Buzz Feels Bigger Than Expected
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- 01. Jeremy Strong's 2024-2025 Oscar Nomination: The Backlash and Backstory
- 02. How the nomination unfolded
- 03. The "quiet backlash" behind the nomination
- 04. Strong's reaction and public tone
- 05. Comparison with the Succession "sibling" race
- 06. How did the backlash intersect with The Apprentice's politics?
- 07. Broader context: Strong's career and the Academy's taste
Jeremy Strong's 2024-2025 Oscar Nomination: The Backlash and Backstory
Jeremy Strong earned his first Academy Award nomination in 2025 for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Roy Cohn in the 2024 film The Apprentice, directed by Ali Abbasi. That nomination, which followed months of awards-season buzz and festival buzz after the film's 2024 Cannes debut, also triggered a quiet but persistent backlash over the film's Trump biopic framing and the perceived self-seriousness of Strong's method-acting persona.
How the nomination unfolded
On January 23, 2025, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced its 97th Oscars nominees, placing Jeremy Strong in the Best Supporting Actor lineup alongside Kieran Culkin (for A Real Pain), Yura Borisov (Anora), Edward Norton (A Complete Unknown), and Guy Pearce (The Brutalist). The category effectively became a Succession family showdown, with both Strong and Culkin nominated in the same race, echoing their on-screen rivalry as Kendall and Roman Roy.
Strong's nomination was widely reported as his first Oscars nod, despite his earlier wins for Succession, including an Emmy in 2020 and a Golden Globe in 2024. Trade outlets such as Deadline and Entertainment Weekly noted that the buzz around his raw, morally ambiguous performance as Roy Cohn had been building since the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, where he shared Best Actor honors with co-lead Sebastian Stan.
The "quiet backlash" behind the nomination
Almost immediately, critical and social-media commentary began to divide around the Strong-Cohn performance. Some critics praised his transformation into the ruthless 1950s-1980s lawyer and political fixer, lauding the physicality and psychological intensity with which he embodied Cohn's ruthlessness, while others questioned whether the performance was more about virtuosic method-acting affect than substantive character revelation.
A segment of the film-critic community also pushed back against the film itself, arguing that The Apprentice's lurid, almost operatic depiction of Donald Trump's early career risked glamorizing a deeply polarizing figure. That friction spilled over into coverage of Strong's nomination, with some outlets framing him as emblematic of a certain kind of "earnest, myth-making" biography cinema that appeals to the Academy but alienates skeptical audiences.
- Strong's reputation as a "serious" method actor intensified scrutiny of his Cohn performance, with detractors pointing to his highly immersive preparatory work.
- Backlash also stemmed from his association with Succession, where his take on Kendall Roy had already polarized viewers and several co-stars.
- Some critics felt the nomination rewarded a film that leaned too heavily on shocking biographical impulses rather than deeper political or historical analysis.
Strong's reaction and public tone
Strong's official response to the nomination was notably earnest and personal, consistent with his public persona. In a statement issued through his representative, he described the nod as "the fulfillment of a lifelong aspiration," emphasizing how long-held the dream of an Oscar had been for him since childhood.
He also tied his performance to the film's broader political context, saying that Roy Cohn's "enduring, ominous presence" had been felt in the U.S. Capitol following the January 6, 2025, presidential inauguration. Those comments prompted further debate, with some praising his willingness to foreground the film's political messaging and others accusing him of politicizing the nomination itself.
- Strong publicly framed the nomination as a culmination of his career trajectory, from his early stage work to his Emmy-winning run on Succession.
- He highlighted the collaborative nature of The Apprentice, noting that he and Sebastian Stan had both received recognition despite the film's divisive reception.
- Strong also acknowledged the controversy surrounding Roy Cohn's legacy, calling the film "harrowing and brave" for interrogating how figures like Cohn helped shape contemporary politics.
Comparison with the Succession "sibling" race
The fact that both Jeremy Strong and Kieran Culkin were nominated in the same category revived comparisons between their Succession brother roles. In the show's finale, Kendall and Roman literally fought for Logan Roy's throne, much as Strong and Culkin found themselves competing for the same Oscar statuette.
Culkin ultimately won the 2025 Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his turn in A Real Pain, a role that had already earned him a BAFTA and a Golden Globe. His acceptance speech included a pointed shout-out to Strong, calling him "amazing in The Apprentice" and professing admiration for his work, which helped defuse rumors of a real-life on-screen-off-screen rivalry.
| Actor | Film (2025) | Role | Pre-Oscar precursors |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jeremy Strong | The Apprentice | Roy Cohn | Cannes Best Actor (tie), limited precursor circuit wins but strong critical buzz |
| Kieran Culkin | A Real Pain | Benji Kaplan | Golden Globe, BAFTA, and multiple critics' awards before the Oscar win |
| Yura Borisov | Anora | Igor | Independent Spirit Award and several festival-focused critics' prizes |
| Edward Norton | A Complete Unknown | Allen Ginsberg | Major guild and critics' group nods ahead of the Academy |
| Guy Pearce | The Brutalist | Architect lead | Multiple critics' top-ten and runner-up placements |
How did the backlash intersect with The Apprentice's politics?
Many detractors argued that the film's Trump-centric narrative leaned too heavily on spectacle and moral provocation instead of rigorous historical analysis, which made Strong's nomination feel ideologically suspect to some audiences. At the same time, defenders insisted that portraying Cohn and his role in Trump's early career was a necessary, if uncomfortable, public-service gesture, and that Strong's performance helped anchor the film's darker themes.
Broader context: Strong's career and the Academy's taste
Jeremy Strong's Oscar nomination for The Apprentice arrives at a moment when the Academy has been under pressure to balance prestige biopics with diverse, non-American narratives. His performance fits squarely within a lineage of American biographical cinema-Porter, Cimino, and Scorsese-style films that foreground morally compromised men navigating power-genres the Oscars have historically favored.
At the same time, Strong's prior accolades for Succession, including his Emmy win for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series in 2020, suggested that he was already an award-recognized talent outside the film world. That history made his first Oscar nomination feel both inevitable and overdue to some critics, even as others argued that the Academy was rewarding him more for cultural relevance than for a decisively superior performance in the category.
Conversely, the quiet backlash around his nomination may also make producers wary of leaning too heavily on his "method" persona, pushing future projects to balance intense character work with broader audience appeal. In that sense, the 2025 nomination may serve less as a final validation of his approach and more as a turning point in how both the industry and the public locate him within contemporary film-acting hierarchies.
Expert answers to Jeremy Strong Oscar Buzz Feels Bigger Than Expected queries
Did Jeremy Strong win the Oscar in 2025?
Jeremy Strong did not win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 2025; the Oscar went to his Succession co-star Kieran Culkin for A Real Pain. Strong's loss has been widely interpreted as part of a broader narrative about the Academy's preference for more accessible, emotionally open performances over the more self-contained, interior work Strong delivered as Roy Cohn.
Why did people react negatively to Jeremy Strong's Oscar nomination?
Much of the negative reaction centered on existing perceptions of Strong as an intensely self-serious "method actor," bolstered by profiles such as a 2021 New Yorker piece that highlighted friction with Succession co-star Brian Cox. Critics and viewers who already viewed him as overly earnest or self-important saw his nomination as the Academy rewarding perceived excess, especially within a film that itself courted controversy for its depiction of Donald Trump's rise.
How has Jeremy Strong responded to being "misunderstood"?
In interviews during the 2025 awards season, Strong admitted that being pigeonholed as a "serious" or overly intense on-screen presence had been "really painful" for him. He acknowledged that some of the criticism stemmed from genuine self-reflection but also from media narratives that amplified friction with former co-stars, suggesting that his sincerity on and off screen sometimes plays as awkward in a culture that prizes irony.
What does this nomination mean for Jeremy Strong's career?
For Strong, the nomination solidifies his status as a leading character-driven film actor beyond television, even if he did not win the Oscar. Industry analysts have speculated that studios may now be more willing to cast him in similarly complex, often morally ambiguous roles, especially in political or biographical dramas that rely on heavily internalized performances.