'Wicked' tops SAG Awards nominations as many big names are snubbed

“Wicked” topped nominations to the 31st Screen Actors Guild Awards on Wednesday, landing a leading five nominations including best ensemble, and individual nods for Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande and Jonathan Bailey.

Out-of-control wildfires that swept across Los Angeles and Southern California on Tuesday night forced the Screen Actors Guild to cancel its plans to announce the nominations live Wednesday morning. The nominations were instead issued by press release by SAG, which last year began a multiyear deal with Netflix to stream the awards.

The smash hit musical “Wicked” saw its Oscar chances rise with the nominations to the SAG Awards, one of the most predictive Academy Awards bellwethers. The movie's big morning — it even scored a nod for stunt ensemble — came after a celebratory night, too. The film was honored by the National Board of Review Awards in New York on Tuesday.

The other nominees for best ensemble are “Anora,” “Conclave,” “Emilia Pérez” and “A Complete Unknown.”

It was an especially strong showing for the Bob Dylan drama “A Complete Unknown.” It came away with four nominations, including Timothée Chalamet for best male actor, and supporting nods for both Edward Norton and Monica Barbaro.

The best male lead nominees were largely as expected: Adrien Brody (“The Brutalist”), Daniel Craig (“Queer”), Colman Domingo (“Sing Sing”), Ralph Fiennes (“Conclave”) and Chalamet.

Coming off her rousing victory at the Golden Globes, Demi Moore was among the nominees for best female actor in a leading role for “The Substance.” She was joined by Erivo, “Emilia Pérez” breakout Karla Sofía Gascón, Mikey Madison of “Anora” and Pamela Anderson for “The Last Showgirl.”

That surprisingly left out some big names. Angelina Jolie (“Maria”) missed out, as did Nicole Kidman (“Babygirl”). A few of the most acclaimed female actors of the year, Marianne Jean-Baptiste (“Hard Truths”) and Globe winner Fernanda Torres (“I’m Still Here”), also were overlooked.

“The Last Showgirl” had more to celebrate, too, with an unexpected nomination for Jamie Lee Curtis in supporting female actor. Her fellow nominees are Barbaro, Grande, Danielle Deadwyler (“The Piano Lesson”) and Zoe Saldaña (“Emilia Perez”).

Jeremy Strong was nominated for his supporting performance as Roy Cohn in the Donald Trump film “The Apprentice,” but his co-star, Sebastian Stan, went unnominated for both “The Apprentice” and his Golden Globe-winning role in “A Different Man.” The other nominees for best supporting male actor were Bailey, Norton, Yura Borisov (“Anora”) and the category frontrunner, Kieran Culkin (“A Real Pain”).

A few widely forecast supporting performances were snubbed there, too, including Denzel Washington (“Gladiator II”) and Guy Pearce (“The Brutalist”).

The SAG Awards are arguably the most telling Oscar forecast there is. Their picks don’t always align exactly with those of the film academy, but they often come very close to mirroring them.

The last three best ensemble winners — “Oppenheimer,” “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and “CODA” — all went on to win best picture at the Academy Awards. All but one of the SAG acting winners of the last three years has also won at the Oscars. The sole exception was Lily Gladstone, who won SAG’s award for female actor last year for “Killers of the Flower Moon,” but the Oscar trophy went to Emma Stone (“Poor Things”).

In all likelihood, the Oscar field will look a lot like the SAG nominees. While some overlooked performances might still land an Oscar nomination, any eventual Academy Award winner, including the best picture recipient, is almost surely coming from those nominated Wednesday.

That's bad news for Brady Corbet's “The Brutalist,” which triumphed at the Globes but missed out on a SAG ensemble nomination. Best picture contender “Sing Sing” also came away with a single SAG nod.

In nominations also announced Wednesday, the Directors Guild favored most of the same films. For outstanding directorial achievement, it nominated Sean Baker (“Anora”), Jacques Audiard (“Emilia Pérez”), Edward Berger (“Conclave”), James Mangold (“A Complete Unknown”) and Corbet (“The Brutalist”). That left out “Wicked” filmmaker Jon M. Chu, as well as “Dune: Part Two” director Denis Villeneuve. The guild also failed to nominate a female filmmaker, like “The Substance” director Coralie Fargeat.

Those nominations only further muddied the waters in a hard-to-predict best picture race. Rarely does a film win the Academy Awards' top prize without a DGA nomination. The only exceptions in recent history are “Driving Miss Daisy” (1989) and “CODA” (2022). That means that as well as “Wicked” did with the screen actors, it still can't be called an Oscar favorite.

Coming off sweeps at the Emmys and the Golden Globes, FX's “Shōgun” continued to run roughshod through the competition, landing a leading five nominations Wednesday, including best ensemble and individual nods for Hiroyuki Sanada, Anna Sawai and Tadanobu Asano.

Also faring well were “The Bear” (nominations for Jeremy Allen White, Ayo Edebiri and Liza Colón-Zayas), “Hacks” (Jean Smart) and “The Diplomat” (Keri Russell, Allison Janney).

The Screen Actors Guild Awards will be held Feb. 23 at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. The ceremony, hosted by Kristen Bell, will be streamed live on Netflix. In addition to the competitive awards, Jane Fonda will be presented with the guild’s Life Achievement Award.

Jeff Goldblum, from left, Michelle Yeoh, Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo, Marc Platt, and Jon M. Chu pose with the award for cinematic and box office achievement for "Wicked" in the press room during the 82nd Golden Globes on Sunday, Jan. 5, 2025, at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

FILE - A general view of the carpet at the 30th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards, Feb. 24, 2024, at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal Reserve officials at their meeting Dec. 17-18 expected to dial back the pace of interest rate cuts this year in the face of persistently elevated inflation and the threat of widespread tariffs and other potential policy changes.

Minutes from the meeting, released after the typical three-week lag, also showed clear division among the Fed's 19 policymakers. Some expressed support for keeping the central bank's key rate unchanged, the minutes said. And a majority of the officials said the decision to cut rates was a close call.

Ultimately, the Fed choose to cut its key rate by a quarter-point to about 4.3%. One official, Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack, dissented in favor of keeping rates unchanged.

Still, there was widespread agreement that after reducing rates for three straight meetings, it was time to undertake a more deliberate approach to their key rate. Economists said the minutes strongly suggest that Fed officials will forego a rate cut at their next meeting in January.

Fewer rate cuts will likely mean that borrowing costs for consumers and businesses — including for homes, cars, and credit cards — will remain elevated this year.

Policymakers said that the Fed “was at or near the point at which it would be appropriate to slow the pace of policy easing,” the minutes said. In projections released after the meeting, Fed officials said they expect just two cuts next year, down from an earlier projection of four.

The minutes also showed that “almost all” Fed policymakers see a greater risk than before that inflation could stay higher than they expect, in part because inflation has lingered in several recent readings and because of “the likely effects of potential changes in trade and immigration policy.”

The Fed’s staff economists considered the economy’s future path particularly uncertain at the December meeting, in part because of the incoming Trump administration’s “potential changes to trade, immigration, fiscal, and regulatory policies,” which the staff said are difficult to assess in terms of how they will impact the economy. As a result they included several different scenarios for the economy’s future path in their presentation to policymakers.

And the staff projected that inflation this year would be about the same as in 2024 because they expected Trump’s proposed tariffs would keep inflation elevated.

Fed officials sent stock markets plummeting Dec. 18 after they reduced their outlook for rate cuts. Fed Chair Jerome Powell said at a news conference after the meeting that the decision to reduce rates had been a “close call."

Powell also said that recent signs of stubborn inflation have caused many Fed officials to pare back their expectations for rate cuts. Inflation, according to the Fed's preferred measure, ticked up to 2.4% in November, compared with a year ago, above the Fed's target. Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, it was 2.8%.

In addition, some officials have started to consider the potential impact of President-elect Trump's proposals, such as widespread tariffs, on the economy and inflation next year, the minutes said.

Economists at Goldman Sachs, for example, have estimated that Trump's tariff proposals could push inflation up by nearly a half-percentage point later this year.

Earlier Wednesday, Fed governor Christopher Waller said that he still supported rate reductions this year, in part because he expects inflation to steadily head down to the Fed's 2% target. He also said he didn't expect tariffs would worsen inflation and wouldn't change his preference for lowering borrowing costs.

Waller also said, in a question and answer session, that he didn't think Trump would ultimately impose the universal tariffs he promised in the campaign.

FILE - The Marriner S. Eccles Federal Reserve Board Building in Washington, Nov. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)