SAG Awards Shake Up Oscar Race with ‘Conclave’ Win and Timothée Chalamet's Surprise Victory

The papal thriller “Conclave” won best ensemble at the 31st Screen Actors Guild Awards on Sunday, a surprise twist that added one final wrinkle in an unusually unpredictable awards season. In winning the guild’s top award, Edward Berger’s Vatican-set drama triumphed just as the Catholic Church was praying for the health of Pope Francis, who remained in critical condition Sunday after an asthmatic respiratory crisis. “Conclave” dramatizes the fictional election of a new pope. Timothée Chalamet won best male actor, upsetting Adrien Brody and putting the 29-year-old on course to possibly win his first Academy Award.

Timothée Chalamet pulled an upset win for Outstanding Male Actor for A Complete Unknown and Conclave shocked as well with an Outstanding Ensemble Cast in a Motion Picture win at the 2025 SAG Awards Sunday night in Los Angeles. The wins made an already tight race for the 2025 Oscars all the more unpredictable. “I wasn’t expecting this at all … truly,” said Chalamet upon accepting his SAG Award for playing music icon Bob Dylan. The actor’s fellow SAG Award nominee Adrien Brody has all but swept Best Actor honors for his turn in The Brutalist during awards season, with wins at the Golden Globes (Drama), Critics Choice Awards and British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards.

Demi Moore, 62, cemented her comeback status when she won the award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role on Sunday at the 31st Screen Actors Guild Awards. The actress, who stars in the satirical body-horror film The Substance, gave a moving speech looking back at the start of her career when she was only a teenager. The other prize for a male actor in a leading role culminated in a surprise win for Timothée Chalamet, 29, for his Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown. But the road to the Oscars was more muddled than ever when the final prize of the night, for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture, went to Conclave.