Can Amy Madigan Win an Oscar for ‘Weapons’?

The 2025/6 awards season has been one of unpredictability. Few of the major categories are safe bets, and many of the Oscar wins we can usually can weeks in advance are still up in the air. One such instance is Best Supporting Actress. Teyana Taylor won the Golden Globe for her breakout performance in One Battle After Another, but Wunmi Mosaku took home the BAFTA for her scene-stealing work in Sinners. Then, on Sunday, the Screen Actors Guild gave the honour to Amy Madigan. It’s not unusual for SAG to want to honour an industry favourite who has been around for decades, worked with everyone, and seldom been acknowledged for it. But it is unexpected to see them do so with a performance in a horror movie, and Weapons is no ordinary horror.

Amy Madigan is a total blast in Weapons. She’s not in Zach Cregger’s manic blend of paranoid thriller, slasher frenzy, and high-camp dark comedy for very long, but she leaves one hell of an impression. As Aunt Gladys, Madigan is a grotesque figure of intense power and social discomfort. She’s styled like Baby Jane as designed by Cindy Sherman, and she revels in the awkwardness and unease her presence elicits in others. The way she can flip between funny and petrifying with barely a blink is startling.

Madigan’s performance is also 100% genre, in a movie that never even tries to shed its proud gnarly core. There’s nothing ‘elevated’ or ‘post-horror’ about Weapons, which makes that Best Supporting Actress nod all the more satisfying. Usually, this is the sort of performance you’d see listed on a ton of critics’ end-of-year lists with the understanding that it’s just too out-there for the industry to celebrate. And yet here we are, in a race where maybe, just maybe, Aunt Gladys could win an Oscar.

It’s long been lamented that the Oscars don’t celebrate horror films. Now and then, one sneaks through, but we’re all too used to seeing the genre be sidelined in favour of more ‘respectable’ fare. How often have we complained about egregious snubs for career-best work from actors otherwise heralded by their peers, just because it was in a horror film? Think of Toni Collette in Hereditary, Lupita Nyong’o in Us, John Goodman in 10 Cloverfield Lane, Christian Bale in American Psycho, Shelly Duvall in The Shining, and Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis in The Fly, to name but a few of my favourites. No matter how much money it makes or how many ‘respectable’ figures make it, horror still contends with this notion that it’s not serious art.

But things have greatly changed over the past decade or so. It was only last year that a body horror satire where a woman pulls a whole chicken drumstick from her navel was nominated for Best Picture. Jordan Peele won an Oscar for Get Out. And, of course, over the decades, the Academy has made many exceptions: Silence of the Lambs winning Best Picture, Sissy Spacek’s Carrie nod, the love for The Exorcist, and so on. The most nominated movie of all time at the Oscars is a horror (and a musical and a drama, because Sinners is just that good.)

What makes Madigan’s nod feel so different then? It’s partly that her work in Weapons is so strange and unlike anything else in that category (which is absolutely stacked with talent this year.) It could only exist in a movie like this, one so gross and frenetic and gleeful in its nastiness. Her final scene is delightfully over the top and uninterested in cinematic respectability. Imagine splicing that moment out for the Oscars montage. It’s also big, but not in the ways the Academy usually goes for. They do love Capital-A Acting, but mostly in biopics, dramas, and sentimental tales of overcoming adversity. Applying that kind of focus to a role that’s not a familiar face or an inspiring monologuist isn’t as appreciated. But when Aunt Gladys tells you that she could make your parents eat one another if she wanted to, you’re chilled to the bone as through she were delivering Shakespeare. Sometimes, the performance is just that good and you have to call it out.

But it’s also that it’s Amy Madigan giving the performance. Madigan has been in the film industry for well over four decades. She’s done everything, from broad comedies like Uncle Buck to dramas like Gone Baby Gone to every possible TV role (shout out to one of my all-time favourite series, Carnivale, where Madigan is especially excellent.) You’ve probably seen Madigan in a dozen things and loved her without necessarily knowing who she was. All too often, she was the best thing in a not-great project. While she has been Oscar-nominated before, for the 1985 drama Twice in a Lifetime, but she is stridently a jobbing actress who has largely kept her head down and got on with the work in hand.

With Weapons, Madigan got not only a meaty role but one that became a major pop culture touchstone of 2025. How many Aunt Gladys drag routines did you see last year? Or Halloween costumes? When I look back on 2025, Gladys will be one of its most familiar faces. She emerged as the star of the moment, and Madigan clearly relished the opportunity. It ignited a wider discussion of her ever-reliable nature as a performer, as an older woman in an ageist industry, and as a badass who protested Elia Kazan’s honourary Oscar.

It feels like everything lined up nicely for Madigan this season: a scene-stealing role, a voter base less snobbish towards horror, a beloved actress getting her moment, and a commercial hit that audiences made into a meme. But can Weapons win her the Best Supporting Actress trophy? I’m still hesitant to predict her, if only because Teyana Taylor and Wunmi Mosaku also have a lot of steam behind them and are in movies with far more nominations. If either One Battle After Another or Sinners begins to sweep, their actresses could be part of that tide. And rightly so, of course. Frankly, anyone in that category could win and it’d be an excellent call (shout out to the women of Sentimental Values.) Still, I cannot help but root for Madigan to pull it off. It would be satisfying as all hell to see her get her dues, and with a role this barmy. Besides, who the hell would want to root against Aunt Gladys? I’m not taking that chance.