The 98th Academy Awards race paused for breath at the Beverly Hilton this week, as nominees filed into the Oscars luncheon for a mix of networking, nostalgia, and soft-power campaigning. What looked like a polite midday ritual turned into a snapshot of where the season’s energy really sits: Ryan Coogler having a career-defining moment, Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal sharing a heartfelt hug, and Emma Stone and Timothée Chalamet quietly holding court at the now-legendary Table 3.


A Softer, Stranger Arena: Why the Oscars Luncheon Matters

Unlike the spectacle of the televised Oscars ceremony, the nominees luncheon is deliberately low on pomp and high on proximity. No acceptance speeches, no orchestra, just round tables, name cards, and a concentration of star power that turns each seating chart into a subtle political document. For voters and campaign teams, this is where narratives are reinforced: the overdue auteur, the breakout newcomer, the studio on a comeback run.

The Academy has leaned on this event as a kind of reset button for a bruising awards calendar. After months of screenings, Q&As, and think pieces, the luncheon offers a reminder that the Oscars are, at their core, a professional peer prize. Sitting nominees together, crossing studio lines, and inviting photos like the annual “class photo” is the institution’s way of saying: remember community, not just competition.

Oscar nominees posing and mingling at the 98th Academy Awards luncheon at the Beverly Hilton
Nominees gather at the 98th Oscars luncheon at the Beverly Hilton, turning awards-season tension into something closer to a class reunion. (Image: Variety)

Ryan Coogler’s Big Moment: From Franchise Architect to Academy Mainstay

One of the clearest emotional throughlines of this year’s luncheon is Ryan Coogler’s evolving position in Hollywood’s power matrix. Having graduated from indie sensation (Fruitvale Station) to franchise world-builder (Black Panther and its sequel), Coogler has long carried critical respect; now he’s increasingly framed as a permanent fixture in the awards conversation, not just a “genre exception.”

Coogler’s presence at the luncheon tracks a broader industry trend: the Academy’s slow but real embrace of filmmakers who can toggle between commercial clout and awards-season prestige. In a post–streaming land grab, the directors who can guarantee both box office and Best Picture chatter are a rare commodity, and the room treated him like one.

“You feel the history in a room like this. But you also feel the responsibility to make sure the people coming after you see themselves up here too.”

That sense of responsibility matters in a year when the Academy continues to navigate inclusivity optics. Coogler’s visibility at the luncheon isn’t just about one film’s campaign; it’s about an evolving canon. His arc mirrors the path of directors like Alfonso Cuarón and Chloé Zhao—filmmakers who moved from festival favorites to career-long Academy courters without sacrificing personal style.

Film director standing in front of a large cinema screen addressing an audience
Directors at the luncheon occupy a rare space: both artists and brand stewards, tasked with carrying their studios’ awards hopes.

The Buckley–Byrne (and Friends) Factor: When Hugs Become Headlines

Awards season loves a narrative pairing almost as much as it loves a frontrunner, and the luncheon delivered one in the form of an affectionate Buckley–Byrne (and related costar) hug. These micro-moments do more than feed social media; they reinforce the idea of “ensemble stories” in a year where multiple films trade on complicated relationships and emotional intimacy.

The Academy has a soft spot for chemistry that travels off-screen. Think of how the visibility of the Little Women cast, or the Everything Everywhere All at Once family, subtly nudged voters toward seeing those films as complete, lived-in worlds rather than isolated performances. When actors like Jessie Buckley and her co-stars are spotted in easy, affectionate mode, it packages the movie as an emotional experience, not just a technical achievement.

  • It generates instantly shareable content, feeding the campaign’s online footprint.
  • It reinforces the film’s emotional themes through candid real-world imagery.
  • It positions the cast as part of a creative “family,” which voters tend to reward.
Two actors warmly hugging backstage at a film event
Candid hugs and reunions at the luncheon often travel farther online than formal portraits, reinforcing the season’s most resonant relationships.

There is, of course, a limit. When every interaction risks becoming content, the line between authentic warmth and strategy can blur. Yet the best of these moments—like this Buckley–Byrne embrace—work because they feel unforced, tapping into the genuine camaraderie that often forms over months of shooting and festival runs.


Emma Stone and Timothée Chalamet at Table 3: The Lunch Power Grid

Every Oscars luncheon has at least one table that feels like the gravitational center of the room. This year, that was Table 3, anchored by Emma Stone and Timothée Chalamet—two actors who represent different but equally potent strains of modern stardom. Stone, already an Oscar winner, is in the “legacy-building” phase; Chalamet remains in the sweet spot between critical darling and generational heartthrob.

Seating them together is no accident. The Academy and studios understand the optics: these are the performers who can bridge demographic gaps, pulling younger viewers into an often-criticized telecast while reassuring older voters that the craft still matters more than the TikTok metrics. A table placement becomes a thesis statement about where the industry is headed.

Round tables filled with actors, directors, and producers at a formal awards-season luncheon
Table assignments at the Oscars luncheon are unofficial power rankings, pairing established icons with ascendant stars.

Stone’s awards-season run has leaned into her willingness to take strange, risk-heavy roles, from La La Land to more recent genre-bending work. Chalamet, meanwhile, has built a career toggling between prestige directors and IP behemoths. Sitting them side by side underscores Hollywood’s evolving formula: one foot in the daring, one foot in the bankable.


The Class Photo and the Politics of Presence

The most ritualized element of the luncheon is the “class photo,” where nominees are called up one by one and arranged in rows. It’s equal parts high-school nostalgia and industry census, compressing the year’s cinematic output into a single image that will be rerun in montages and retrospectives for decades.

In a year when representation and global reach remain front-of-mind, the photo doubles as a visual report card. Who made it into the frame from international cinema? How many streaming platforms are represented relative to theatrical studios? Which crafts—editing, sound, production design—are foregrounded alongside the actors and directors?

A large group of film professionals lined up on stage for a group photo
The annual nominees “class photo” distills an entire year of film into a single, endlessly dissected image.
  • Symbolism: The arrangement subtly reflects hierarchies and who the Academy wants at the visual center.
  • Memory: For many below-the-line nominees, this is the most public-facing moment of their careers.
  • Legacy: The image becomes shorthand for “the year movies looked like this.”

The strength of this year’s photo lies in its range—stars, craftspeople, international filmmakers—though the composition still reveals where the Academy’s inclusivity project remains a work in progress. It’s more diverse than the lineups that sparked #OscarsSoWhite, but not so transformed that players from marginalized communities can relax.


Beyond the Glamour: Campaign Strategy in Real Time

Under the clink of glasses and polite laughter, the luncheon is a meticulously managed campaign environment. Publicists float between tables, ensuring their clients get meaningful face time with key voters. Directors hop from one cluster of actors to another, reinforcing narratives of collaboration and shared credit that tend to resonate with an Academy composed largely of working peers.

The shift from old-school “For Your Consideration” billboards to more human-scale campaigning is clear. Where once the splashiest ad buys signaled dominance, now it’s who can make the room feel warmest, most collegial, and most confident without appearing aggressive. That balance is difficult to strike, and a few hopeful contenders inevitably come off a little too eager.

People networking and chatting in a hotel ballroom during an awards event
The Oscars luncheon doubles as a campaign floor, where conversations and handshakes can sway undecided voters more than any billboard.

There are downsides. The focus on charm and visibility can favor the already-established: actors with big personalities, directors backed by major studios, and films that can afford a robust awards push. Smaller international titles, even when nominated, may struggle to command equal attention in such a dense social ecosystem.


Watch the Season Unfold: Trailers, Clips, and Soundtracks

Part of the luncheon’s fun for fans is connecting the faces in the room with the work that brought them there. If you’re tracking the race from home, a mini-marathon of the year’s key trailers and soundtracks is the best way to replicate the buzz.

While the luncheon itself isn’t livestreamed, its aftershocks land online in the form of red-carpet interviews, social posts, and studio-cut featurettes, all helping to frame which films feel like events and which quietly grow into sleeper favorites.


What This Luncheon Tells Us About Oscar Night

Taken as a whole, this year’s Oscars nominees luncheon sketches a familiar but evolving picture of the film industry. Ryan Coogler’s expanded stature signals a more porous line between blockbuster and awards cinema. The Buckley–Byrne hug reminds voters that emotion—not just craft—sticks. And Emma Stone and Timothée Chalamet sharing Table 3 underlines a generational changing of the guard that the Academy is cautiously trying to keep up with.

The strengths of the event are clear: it humanizes the nominees, offers rare cross-discipline mingling, and tempers the zero-sum rhetoric with something closer to mutual respect. Its weaknesses—limited space for smaller campaigns, persistent inequities in who gets the spotlight—are harder to ignore each year. But if the room’s energy is any indication, the 98th Oscars are less about coronating a single juggernaut and more about negotiating what the next decade of cinema should look like.

When the cameras roll on Oscar night, the winners’ speeches will be the official record. Yet the real story—the glances, the alliances, the subtle recalibration of who matters in Hollywood—was already playing out over bread baskets and politely refilled coffee cups at the Beverly Hilton.