The Best Supporting Actor category at the 97th annual Academy Awards features a duel between two former Succession co-stars: Jeremy Strong for his role in The Apprentice, and Kieran Culkin for his role in A Real Pain.

The pair played two brothers — and potential successors to a media empire — in the HBO series that wrapped in 2023 after four seasons. Their category also includes Yuri Borisov for Anora, Edward Norton for A Complete Unknown, and Guy Pearce in The Brutalist.

Culkin has widely been seen as a frontrunner because of his role as the more troubled half of a pair of cousins who go on a Holocaust memorial tour in A Real Pain, opposite writer-director Jesse Eisenberg.

Strong plays Roy Cohn in The Apprentice, which details the early relationship between the closeted, scheming lawyer and Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan).

Succession Sniping

Bowen Yang and Rachel Sennott announce the Oscar nominees. ABC

Culkin and Strong have appeared to tweak each other during award season interviews. During a Variety “Actors on Actors conversation, Culkin called out actors who call themselves “storytellers,” citing Strong specifically.

“I object to when actors call themselves ‘storytellers,’” Culkin said last month. “I don’t really like that.”

He added, “Sorry, Jeremy. I don’t think I’m telling the story.”

Also Read: 9 Succession Parallels With the Murdoch Family Too Wild to Ignore

Strong has also been questioned by Succession star Brian Cox for his extreme on-set commitment during the HBO series. Cox once called Strong’s method acting “f—ing annoying” in an interview with Town & Country. He later clarified in an interview with The Guardian: “He was wonderful to act with. I had no argument with Jeremy’s acting. … He would be an even better actor if he just got rid of that so there would be much more inclusiveness in what he did.”

Strong appeared to respond to Culkin, though not by name, in an interview with Deadline earlier this month. 

“Lately, people have felt a need to take shots at me or say disparaging things, which I don’t really think there’s any need for,” Strong said. “The way I approach things, my process. I feel we’re storytellers. … Those are actors telling story through character, which to me is the highest bar. That’s the holy grail for me, creating a character, which is sort of creating an instrument that’s never existed before… That’s the kind of acting that I love. And it does require a kind of, I don’t know, devil may care attitude towards what anybody might think of what you’re doing.”

Main image: Kieran Culkin, left, and Jeremy Strong on Succession. HBO

Editor’s note: Updates throughout