Jessie Buckley is unbeatable at the Oscars. Unless this happens

You will be forgiven for flinging the newspaper (or phone or laptop) through the nearest window in fury. Who wants to read Oscar speculation five months before the event?

The distance from the ceremony is part of the point. It is rare that a potentially unbeatable favourite emerges quite so early in a lead-acting race. When that does happen, he or she is usually a genuine veteran. Only a meteor strike could have stopped Helen Mirren (then 61) from winning for The Queen, in 2007. Julianne Moore (then 54), up for Still Alice, started at a canter for the 2015 ceremony and ended up unbackable favourite with bookies.

So is it mad that the Oscar nerds are already engraving Jessie Buckley’s name on the trophy? The Kerry woman is still in her mid-30s. She has been nominated just once before. Is it not tempting disaster to suggest she is about to become the first Irish woman to win best actress?

Maybe. But every reliable indicator is pointing vigorously in that direction. There was much chatter before Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet premiered at Telluride Film Festival, in late August. Zhao was a dual Oscar winner for Nomadland. Maggie O’Farrell’s source novel, about William and Agnes Shakespeare’s grief after the death of their eponymous son, was a favourite of book clubs everywhere.

Jessie Buckley is unbeatable at the Oscars. Unless this happens

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Buckley and Paul Mescal, who play the bereaved couple, were both already Oscar nominees. If anything, some worried it might be a little too flamboyantly Oscar-friendly.

The breathless reviews put such cynical chatter to bed. Buckley, who carries the latter half of the picture, was singled out for particular praise. David Ehrlich, of the influential IndieWire, talked about the “primordial rawness of Buckley’s astonishing performance”. Richard Lawson, in the Guardian, said she was “nothing short of a wonder”.

There were reports of tears washing down the aisles of the cinema in southwestern Colorado. The raves continued at Toronto International Film Festival, where the film won the influential People’s Choice Award, and at the current London Film Festival.

So Hamnet is the kind of film that wins Oscars. Buckley is easily good enough in it to take the prize. (This is not a column about what should win, but we note that nonetheless.) All that stands in the way are pesky other actors. At the time of Hamnet’s premiere, few other competitors seemed plausible.

This is not to say that there is a dearth in quality. This would not be akin to Jessica Chastain’s post-Covid win, in 2022, when, with apologies to Olivia Colman’s decent turn in The Lost Daughter, voters were left saying “What else?” It’s more that few of the competing turns seem so well-positioned as Buckley.

Renate Reinsve is good in Joachim Trier’s Cannes hit Sentimental Value, but she feels like one in an ensemble. Cynthia Erivo didn’t come close for Wicked. So it seems improbable that she will be rewarded for Wicked: For Good. Emma Stone is unlikely to get a third Oscar win in 10 years – something beyond even Meryl Streep and Ingrid Bergman – despite being on fire in Yorgos Lanthimos’s Bugonia. Rose Byrne could challenge as a harried mother in the well-reviewed If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, but that film doesn’t yet have the popular weight behind it.

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So there is a reason the professional bookmakers already have Buckley a runaway favourite at 2/5. Expect those odds to come in a bit more as the precursor awards kick off.

Buckley, a remarkable all-rounder, would be a commendable addition to the relatively short list of Irish Oscar winners. Only two performers from Ireland have even been nominated for best actress: Saoirse Ronan and Ruth Negga. With three nods in that category and one in best supporting actress, Ronan might reasonably have expected to get the prize first, but Buckley is, in fact, four years older. (Ronan really did start young.)

We launch this dangerously pre-emptive discussion just three weeks after the death of the only Irish woman to win two Oscars. Michèle Burke, from Kilkenny, took best makeup and hairstyling for Quest for Fire, in 1982, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, in 1992. Buckley would join Brenda Fricker as the only other Irish woman with an acting prize.

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And yet. There are risks. Everyone likes Rose Byrne, and critics could well start a momentum shift in her direction. At the time of Hamnet’s premiere, Mona Fastvold’s wild musical The Testament of Ann Lee, starring Amanda Seyfried as the founder of the Shaker movement, had yet to secure distribution. It is now with the Oscar-friendly Searchlight Pictures and will have a full campaign behind it. Those two seem the ones that could spoil the party.

Here ends the Oscar speculation (for a month or two).