Carey Mulligan is mostly flying under the radar as an Oscar nominee this year, maybe because the Best Actress race is currently a giant mess and if there is an upset, it will be Lily Gladstone losing to Emma Stone. Sandra Huller – who should have been the leading contender in the Oscar race – has barely campaigned, so Carey is sort of stepping into the void of “just happy to be here” nominees. And Carey is genuinely happy to be here. Her nomination for Maestro is her third Oscar nom, all in the lead category. She’s probably right up there with one of the best actresses to never win an Oscar. Carey recently chatted with the Times of London about the nomination, her marriage to Marcus Mumford and her religion:

She watched the Oscar nominations announcement live in the UK: She watched this year’s Oscar nominations announcement live, with her “heart racing”, in the Devonshire farmhouse that she shares with her husband, the singer-songwriter Marcus Mumford (of Mumford & Sons). He had placed round the TV screen Post-it notes containing encouraging mottos such as “You’re great!” just in case. The Oscar nomination, she says, “is just the coolest thing. Because it’s from your peers. It’s wicked.” And the thousands (literally) of actors that I’ve met who say that awards don’t matter and that it’s the work that counts? “They are 100 per cent lying.”

On the ‘Barbie’ Oscar snubs: “I’m gutted for Greta because I don’t know what else you can do as a director to get nominated. You make a critically acclaimed film that’s also an incredible global success, and yet you don’t get nominated?”

On the ‘Saltburn’ Oscar shutout: “I went to the Saltburn premiere in LA and I sat with Em and there were 1,700 people having just the greatest f***ing experience, so I don’t know. I think the main takeaway is just how incredibly it was picked up. Initially, people didn’t know how to respond and then suddenly it took over the internet and now it’s become this enormous phenomenon where you can buy candles [on Etsy and Amazon] called Jacob Elordi’s Bathwater.”

Bradley Cooper made her stop hanging out with the crew & joking around: “I always loved being one of the lads with the crew, and I never wanted to isolate myself from people by doing anything excruciating like staying in your dialect between takes,” she says. Cooper, apparently, disabused her of this notion. “He said, ‘There’s no other way to do this, you cannot flip between these two people.’”

She’s fine with talking about her husband, Marcus Mumford: “I find it easier now because when we were first married I was really conscious of thinking, ‘I am not part of a celebrity couple. That’s just weird.’ And we were both trying to build our careers in our own rights.” She says that the “no marriage questions” policy has outlived its usefulness or relevance, especially now, “when we’ve been married for ever, and he came to the Golden Globes with me, and I bring him to the big things because it’s just more fun when he’s there”.

She & Marcus met at a kids’ Christian camp: “I don’t think I would describe myself as super-super-Christian. But I was definitely brought up going to church and I still go to church, but it’s not, like, a hot topic. I’m very happy to say that I’m Christian and I go to church.”

She’s not a cinephile: She was, and still is, “not a cinephile in any way. To this day I’ll make time to watch The Traitors, but I’m not watching lots of films.” She’s also an award-winning theatre actress, but, she says, having three children under eight mostly rules out a return to the stage. “It would have to be in a school holiday window.I thought it would be harder when they were little to do it, but missing bedtime at the end of the day, when your children are a little bit older, is trickier.”

[From The Times]

Re: her comments about Greta Gerwig, there’s this really weird thing being done on the internet where, whenever anyone talks about how disgusting it is that Gerwig and Margot Robbie were snubbed, certain people are like “stop talking about them, you should be paying more attention to the people who were nominated!” And then the actual nominees are inevitably like “wow, those Barbie snubs were f–king brutal and sexist.” Juliet Triet did it too, so did other nominees. I think the Barbie-haters have really underestimated what a big deal it is that Gerwig was snubbed especially. And Carey is right – those awards matter, the industry approval matters, and people are lying when they say the noms or awards don’t matter. That’s why the snubs matter too.

As for what she says about needing to stay in character on Maestro… like, I understand the technical reasons for it, but Bradley Cooper always sounds like such a douche as a director. While I know Lady Gaga played up the stories about him, he was an a–hole to her too. Also: I did not know that she’s quite Christian, but I’ve noticed that she talks more about Marcus these days and they’re more open now. I think that’s really nice.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.