Julianne Moore got where she is today thanks to her pathological need to go against the grain. She started her career in soap operas, and could have made a perfectly decent living there, but then she decided to change things up and move into film. Again, she could have made a perfectly decent career starring in the sort of fare she was offered, in entertaining schlock like Body of Evidence and The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, but she decided to change things up once more by seeking out work with auteurs like Paul Thomas Anderson and the Coen Brothers. And it worked, winning her an Oscar in the process.
There is a chance that she will win another next year. Moore’s staggering, unsettling work in Todd Haynes’s May December – where she plays an older woman who has been in a decades-long relationship with a man that began when he was just 13 years old – has already received such a slew of nominations that an Oscar nod is all but guaranteed. And so, once again, she has decided to change things up.
If you’ve been paying attention to the leading Oscar campaigns of the last few years, you’ll know that there are basically only two categories. If you really want an Oscar, you can either bore people rigid by blathering on about the your total immersion within a role (Lady Gaga did this for House of Gucci a couple of years ago, and it’s clear that this is going to be Bradley Cooper’s tactic for Maestro), or you can basically just act like a competition winner. Richard E Grant and Ke Huy Quan are both textbook examples here, whipping their enthusiasm up into ridiculous overblown gales in the vain hope that they’ll come across as heartfelt devotees of Hollywood rather than wildly overcaffeinated toddlers.
But that approach is starting to get old, which is why Moore has decided to mix things up. If Julianne Moore is going to win an Oscar, then by god she’s going to do it with arbitrary hatred.
During a recent panel with the May December cast at the 92nd Street Y, Moore was asked a very important question about foods that confuse them. “Mashed potatoes. Why do people like mashed potatoes? It’s just mush. It’s just mush!” Moore spat. “People love it, they love them, it’s just mashed mush.”
Now, it’s worth pointing out that Moore’s dislike of mashed potato is not new. Five years ago, to promote George Clooney’s Suburbicon, she voiced her hatred of mashed potatoes with such force that she left her own body and started referring to herself in the third person to lessen the horror. “Julianne Moore does not like mashed potatoes!” she yelled. “That’s Julianne Moore’s least favourite thing.”
And now, admit it, you kind of want Moore to win an Oscar a tiny bit more, don’t you? Even if you like mashed potato. Even if you’re the world’s staunchest defender of mashed potato. The fact that Moore has gone out of her way to go after mashed potato with such focused invective, despite mashed potato not even being that much of a theme within May December, is nothing but endearing.
The question now is what happens next. The Oscars are still a few months away, so the big worry is that Moore has blasted out of gates too soon with her big anti-mash ticket, and she’ll run out of momentum before the ceremony itself. As far as I can see it, she has a few choices. The first is to really deep-dive into her hatred of mashed potatoes, perhaps agreeing to a handful of Longform podcast interviews where she’ll be able to psychologically interrogate the genesis and continuation of her bold anti-mash stance.
The second is to publicly try and overcome her burning hatred of mash, gradually working her way up to an appearance on The Tonight Show where she can boldly work her way through a Tupperware pot of it with a plastic fork while Jimmy Fallon flaps and spasms like a tasered sea lion at her.
But the approach I’d choose, however, is to just keep picking stuff to slag off without explanation. Maybe next time Moore speaks in public, she can clear her throat and announce her disdain for hats. Or she could stop at a premiere and inform a red carpet interviewer that she’s always wanted to punch a horse in the face. When the Oscar luncheon comes around, maybe she can hold a placard reading ALL CANDLES CAN PISS OFF.
Her competitors must know what trouble they’re in. Expect a counter-offensive to take place any moment now. If Emily Blunt doesn’t publicly announce that she despises envelopes, or if Da’Vine Joy Randolph doesn’t tweet about her colossal dislike of trees, then the Oscar already belongs to Julianne Moore.
