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Inde Navarrette is expected to be a contender at next year's Academy Awards
Obsession, which has grossed nearly $500 million at the box office against just a ~$750,000 budget, has made star Inde Navarrette one of the biggest Hollywood breakouts of the year. Focus Features, the studio that distributed the film, will reportedly look to continue Navarrette’s breakout year into 2027 with a push to make her an Oscar nominee.
The studio is mounting a Best Actress campaign for Inde Navarrette’s performance as Nikki Freeman in Obsession ahead of the 2027 Academy Awards, according to reports. Obsession is Focus Features’ highest-grossing film of all time at over $459 million worldwide, and Navarrette has already won Best Performance at the Seattle International Film Festival for the role.
Focus Features is reportedly mounting a Best Actress Oscar campaign for Inde Navarrette’s performance in Obsession
It’s Official !!! @FocusFeatures is Building an Oscar Campaign Around Inde Navarrette !!! pic.twitter.com/zaw5NNDOXk
— Inde Navarrette Updates (@indenupdates) July 29, 2026
Horror performances are historically overlooked by the Academy, with the genre’s last Best Actress winner being Kathy Bates for Misery in 1991. Last year, however, Madigan won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her work in Weapons. Prior to Michael B. Jordan last year, the most recent horror performance to win Best Actor at the Oscars was Anthony Hopkins for The Silence of the Lambs in 1992.
Beyond that, though, the Academy Awards have also shown an increasing willingness to reward performances in popular films, as evidenced by wins for Mikey Madison (Anora) and Jordan (Sinners) in recent years. Nominating movies that people have actually got to the theater to see is also a way to drive more viewership to the ceremony.
Whichever category Navarrette winds up running in — whether it be in Best Actress or Best Supporting Actress — will likely shape the campaigns of other contenders who also toe the line between lead and supporting, such as Anne Hathaway in The Odyssey.
The Best Supporting categories are ultimately a matter of semantics and have been accused of prompting “category” fraud, with the likes of Zoe Saldana and Kieran Culkin winning in recent years despite effectively being the leads of their films. That’s where the semantics come in. Neither Culkin nor Saldana — nor Navarrette, for that matter — are the top-billed performers in their respective projects, therefore making them, by literal definition, “supporting.”
Prior to her breakout role in Obsession, Navarrette’s previous credits included the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why and The CW’s Superman & Lois.