Kieran Culkin has given so many awards acceptance speeches in the last couple of years that I reckon I could have a good stab at writing one. The beats are straightforward: Sarcastic opener, then a sincere handbrake turn thanking his manager Emily Gerson Saines, ending with an anecdote about his wife Jazz. It’s good, it’s charming, it works. He is mercifully brief, too (two and a half minutes compared to Adrien Brody’s five-minute epic later in the night, which was begging for an intermission). But last night, he threw in a new, unexpected note: a shout-out to his former Succession co-star and fellow nominee Jeremy Strong.
“Jeremy you’re amazing in The Apprentice,” Culkin said, before the telecast bleeped out the remainder of the sentence for obvious reasons: “I love your work, it’s fucking great.” In the crowd, Strong’s facial expression gave very little away.
Strong and Culkin's relationship has become a talking point in recent months largely because Culkin joked about Strong's deeply committed acting style on the campaign trail. In December, in Variety’s Actors on Actors segment with Colman Domingo, he said: “I sort of object to when actors call themselves storytellers—sorry, Jeremy.” When Variety shared this clip on socials, it was paired with a snippet from the actors' roundtable, which Culkin had been part of, with Strong referring to himself as a storyteller. Years before, in the now notorious New Yorker profile of Strong, Culkin said of Strong's tendency to self-isolate between scenes: “That might be something that helps him, I can tell you that it doesn't help me.”
Strong appeared to respond to Culkin (and Brian Cox, who has called Strong's process “Fucking annoying”) in an interview with Deadline in January. “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.”
It's a pretty neat Oscars narrative. Two beefing former co-stars who represent different schools of thought on acting: Kieran Culkin is the guy who shows up having learned his lines in the car ride over, all naturalism and charm, while Jeremy Strong is the one who spends months and months researching and bending his life around a role. In January, when the nominations were announced, this narrative was encapsulated in their reactions: Culkin's wife shared a photo of him opening a bottle of champagne in Paris, while Strong shared a long, earnest statement that called it "the realization of a lifelong dream".
So, with all of that in mind, it was a refreshing surprise to hear Culkin acknowledge Strong in what will have undoubtedly been the most important speech of his career. And you get the sense he really meant it—Culkin is not one for faux sincerity. So let's just call it now: this beef, if it ever really was one, is officially over. Let's all move on. No more potshots in the press (we're looking at you, too, Brian). And let's all just allow Jeremy Strong to bathe in beans or do whatever he has to do to get that Oscar in 2026. Onwards.
This story originally appeared in British GQ.