Every awards season always throws up plenty of surprises, but nobody could have predicted an emotionally-driven drama made on a shoestring budget that earned a mere $31,000 at the box office would go on to become one of the biggest and most controversial talking points of the year in cinema, at least until the conspiracy surrounding To Leslie ended up launching an industry-wide investigation.
While anybody to have seen director Michael Morris’s incendiary deep dive into the perils of addiction would fully agree that Andrea Riseborough was phenomenal in the lead role, her Academy Award nomination for Best Actress ended up opening a massive can of worms that threatened to overshadow the entire Oscars.
Sneaking in at the last second to make the shortlist, suspicions were raised when a slew of high-profile backers went out of their way to single out To Leslie and Riseborough for praise during interviews, which then led to allegations that voting rules may have been broken due to “aggressive lobbying” on behalf of the film, something forbidden by the Academy.
Eventual winner Michelle Yeoh got dragged into it when she shared screenshots on social media that mentioned rival Cate Blanchett by name, but not before Tom Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick schmoozing became part of the discourse, too. In the end, the investigation determined there was no wrongdoing, with Riseborough securing her certified Best Actress nod.
Not to say that the headline-grabbing nature of its Oscar run is the culprit, but it can’t help but be noticed that To Leslie is currently the number one most-watched feature among Netflix subscribers in the United States, per FlixPatrol. They say there’s no such thing as bad publicity, so maybe the buzz is what’s made it appointment viewing for the streaming service’s subscribers.