Best Supporting Podcast

It’s the Little Movie That Could of 2006, “Little Miss Sunshine”! It shined at the Oscars, including a frankly totally deserved Best Supporting Actress nomination for Abigail Breslin and equally wholly deserved wins for Michael Arndt’s screenplay and Alan Arkin as dirty grandpa. But there’s also the way Toni Collette eats that popsicle and Greg Kinnear dealing with a kinky cop and Steve Carell and...

Suburban strife in the early 2000s feels good in a place like this. This week we’re wading into a neighborhood pool full of dysfunction, premature midlife crisis and some fabulous features ensemble lady acting, it’s 2006’s “Little Children”! Kate Winslet and Patrick Wilson are a veritable heat wave of extramarital chemistry but then there’s Jackie Earle Haley and Jane Adams on the date from hell,...

We’ve made an excellent choice this week covering 2001’s “I Am Sam”! Sean Penn’s performance is far from an infamous bus ride with one’s sister and he’s surrounded by an ensemble of women that includes Michelle Pfeiffer, Dakota Fanning, Dianne Wiest, Laura Dern and Loretta Devine, a Best supporting bunch of friends, an Easter egg hunt of great actors in featured ensemble roles, beautiful Beatles c...

While we took a bit of a break last week, we were in fact in Pittsburgh TOGETHER for a weekend of eating, chatting, eating some more, and encountering a series of BSAs in the wild, including an extra goosey Lucy, the no nonsense matrons of the Friday fish fry, a psychic diner waitress and just a dazzling variety of baked goods along the way. Join us for The Best Supporting Aftershow and early acce...

From talking cats to supportive husbands to dancing matriarchs, we just can't get enough TikTok. This week we're taking a break from the usual Oscar bait and high profile actressing to queen out on the Best Supporting TikTokers of our lives. May our picks find their way to your For You Page! Join us for The Best Supporting Aftershow and early access to main episodes on Patreon: www.patreon.com/bsa...

If all you know of this movie is the steamy, swoony Andrew Scott/Paul Mescal press tour, well get ready to have your heart broken. Andrew Haigh’s “All of Us Strangers” is as much about the curious courtship of Adam and Harry as it is about grief, letting go of the past and feeling like a ghost in this world. Jamie Bell and Claire Foy’s Best Supporting Dad and Mum will make you weep at some point,...

Don your board shorts, your racquetball glasses and a wavering Connecticut accent and let’s help Annette Bening swim to Florida! This week we’re diving into the 2023 biopic, “Nyad,” with a deserving Best Actress/Best Supporting Actress nomination combination for Annette and Jodie Foster. The script itself may wade into the shallow end occasionally, but the performances and the focus on friendship...

Just in time for the big discounts on Valentine’s Day candy, we are going back to the good old days of 2011’s “Crazy Stupid Love”! It’s teeming with Oscar winners and nominees, including this year’s Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, a hot dog free Julianne Moore and Queen Steve Carell. To say nothing of Marisa Tomei and Kevin Bacon making the most with a little, the always welcome Beth Littleford and J...

At long last, for this week’s Birthday Girl’s Choice we’re finally discussing the classic actressing buffet that is “All About Eve”! Anne Baxter, Bette Davis, Celeste Holm and Thelma Ritter took a lion’s share of Oscar nominations that year, and Best Supporting Venomous Fishwife Addison DeWitt earned George Sanders a well deserved win. We do a lot of fantasy casting, from Real Housewives to Black...

It’s Birthday Girl’s Choice this week and we can’t think of a better way to celebrate turning 39 than a bit of “Fun Mom Dinner”! It’s the quintessential love to hate to love kind of movie. It’s got a stacked cast with Toni Collette, Bridget Everett and Molly Shannon, but it’s also got a plot that mostly meanders around on a quiet Thursday night in a suburban downtown and eventually introduces us t...

We may not exactly be God, but we are definitely here for Margaret this week as we queen out on 2023’s adaptation of Judy Blume’s “Are You There God? it’s Me, Margaret.” Rachel McAdams glows in her mom era, giving us so many nuances in her own coming of age as Barbara Simon. We’ll buy Kathy Bates as a Jewish grandmother in New York, but what if it was Caroline Aaron? We discuss parallels to Eighth...

Da’Vine Joy Randolph is practically lapping the other contenders in the race for Best Supporting Actress at the Oscars this year for her performance in “The Holdovers.” And we may or may not quite get why! We try to figure out why we’re not holding strong feelings over Randolph’s grieving mother Mary, but we can agree that Paul Giamatti is at his Giamattiest and Carrie Preston is an A+ Assistant t...

There’s just never enough hot dogs in Todd Haynes’ brilliant “May December”! Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman are both monsters in sunglasses, and Charles Melton’s broken DILF makes us want to re-read Codependent No More immediately. Join us for The Best Supporting Aftershow and early access to main episodes on Patreon: www.patreon.com/bsapod Email: thebsapod@gmail.com Instagram: @bsapod Colin D...

It’s a Nancy Meyers Christmas this week as we take on 2006’s harbinger of the home exchange craze, “The Holiday”! Kate Winslet goes from Bridget Jones to Elizabeth Gilbert thanks to two weeks in LA, a formative friendship with Eli Wallach, and a sort of requisite love interest in Jack Black. Meanwhile Cameron Diaz spirals out in the English countryside till Jude Law shows up with those daughters a...

We’re flung out of space this week for “Carol”! We have been sleeping on potentially the best LGBT movie on the shelf, with Oscar nominated and worthy performances by Her Majesty Cate Blanchett and the BSA with the dragon tattoo herself, Rooney Mara, as well as Sarah Paulson as Best Supporting Abbie and that Glassy score by Carter Burwell, We may not necessarily want to eat Carol’s lunch (so to sp...

We’re just a couple of Beths aspiring to be Jo, hoping to be Amy but happy to end up like Meg, to say nothing of Marmee! This week, we’re welcoming in the holiday season with a perfect early 90s cozy up on the couch and cry movie, “Little Women”! Kirsten Dunst nearly steals the show until Clare Danes pulls out all the stops, Winona Ryder earns her Oscar nod and Susan Sarandon finally brings up the...

We’re headed to a nursing home in Buffalo in the dead of winter this week! We’re discussing Tamara Jenkins’ darkly funny “The Savages,” with two Queen Philips, Bosco and Seymour Hoffman, Laura Linney giving Best Supporting Sister, and some featured ensemble standouts like Debra Monk, Gbenga Akinnagbe and Margo Martingale. (To say nothing of Burt and Lizzie!) This movie brings up a lot of thoughts...

Awards season has unofficially begun with The Third Annual Westons! It is literally our biggest episode of the year, as we celebrate the best supporting friends, sisters, moms, men, assistants to the BSA, kitchen acting, score and more from this past year of episodes, induct a new batch of Queens and announce our BSA of the Year! Join us for The Best Supporting Aftershow and early access to main e...

We’re dancing with our fingers and finding out what they call a quarter pounder with cheese in France this week as we continue TarantiNovember/NovUMAber with the 90s modern classic, “Pulp Fiction”! Uma Thurman’s Oscar nominated performance as the mysterious and charming Mia Wallace steals the second act of the movie and much of our time in this week’s episode, when we’re not talking about lunch me...

TarantiNovember aka NovUMAber continues this week with Volume 2 of Beatrix Kiddo’s quest to Kill Bill. The frenetic violence of the first movie gives way to a more plaintive western, but we still get the Texas funeral, Beatrix’s training montage with Pai Mei, the Budd and Elle one act play in a trailer in the middle of the desert, Daryl Hannah serving hysterical blindness, a potential “Hysterical...

We’re wiggling all of our toes this week as we kick off TarentiNovember. The magnificence of Uma Thurman as an action star giving face journeys and nuance is enough to make both of swoon. We discover that Mr. Tarentino is the ultimate reference queen, the newfound sexiness of men in eye masks, and the magic of Lucy Liu. Join us for SEASON 1 of "SMASH" and get early access to main episodes on Patre...

Who will survive and what will be left of us this week as we tackle the titan of terror herself, 1974’s “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”! And despite the gruesome title, it’s a surprisingly beautiful movie with a lot to say about the horrors of meat eating and ultimately an account of what Queen Sally Hardesty will endure to escape becoming tomorrow night’s dinner. Along the way we wheel through a ro...

We’ll just die if we don’t get to talk about Paula Prentiss in 1975’s “The Stepford Wives” this week! The original and far superior adaptation of Ira Levin’s potentially prophetic novel features a real Mary and Rhoda duo in Katherine Ross’s Joanna and Prentiss’s Bobbie, who along with Tina Louise’s Charmaine can’t understand why the other wives in town just love to keep their houses clean and thei...

We’re going back to another childhood favorite this week to kick off the best supporting spooky season! “Ghostbusters” may be a perfect vehicle for Bill Murray to do the Bill Murray thing, but we’re here for some long overdue Annie Potts appreciation as bespectacled receptionist Janine and to, of course, recognize the icon that is Dana Barrett’s apartment. (That fridge!) To say nothing of Sigourne...

We're going back...back...back to sequels this week with the cult classic dud, "Grease 2"! It's off-kilter and amusing for about 45 minutes, and then it really goes into a ditch, but in the meantime we get Didi Conn, Lorna Luft, Eve Arden, Dodie Goodman, Adrian Zmed, Peter Frechette and of course, Michelle Pfeiffer as Stephanie, who's a total ketchup abuser and maybe kind of a jerk, and Maxwell Ca...