The Original Oscars Blogger Takes on Hollywood as a MAGA Pundit

Earlier this month, Sasha Stone watched the Oscars alone in her home just outside Los Angeles. For someone who has spent over two decades as a leading voice in awards season coverage, it was a notably unglamorous way to experience the ceremony. Yet, she was delighted that Anora—a high-energy story about a New York stripper’s whirlwind romance with a young Russian man—secured top honors in what proved to be a historic night.

For Stone, the film’s greatest strength was its lack of overt political messaging—something she now considers a crucial criterion when evaluating movies. Reflecting on her early years as an Oscars blogger, she acknowledges that she once fit comfortably within Hollywood’s mainstream liberal ethos, which was often reflected in the films she championed. However, she now believes she was mistaken in her past outlook, even as she retains a deeper understanding of Hollywood’s dynamics than many conservatives who were never part of that world.

“This is where I clash with the right,” Stone said in an interview the day after the ceremony. “They refuse to give the Oscars or Hollywood any credit. I knew the narrative was going to be ‘The Oscars are terrible,’ and I was going to have to take a different stance.”

Her advice to conservatives? Take the win. And after some initial criticism on Monday morning, many did. The ceremony earned rare praise from right-leaning commentators for largely avoiding politics—apart from a brief quip about Donald Trump by host Conan O’Brien—and for Kieran Culkin’s acceptance speech, in which he publicly asked his wife for more children, a moment described by The Daily Caller as “relatable to middle America.”

At 60, Stone embodies a familiar archetype in conservative circles: a former mainstream liberal who has since rejected that ideology. Throughout the 2010s, as pop culture took a leftward turn, she embraced the shift, celebrating groundbreaking Oscar winners like Moonlight and Parasite and publicly supporting Democratic politicians such as Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden.

For Stone and many others in her position, 2020 was a turning point. That year marked the beginning of her ideological shift, and she has since embraced a brand of punditry aligned with the Make America Great Again movement. She voted for Trump in November and now frequently shares provocative, even incendiary, opinions on social media and her personal Substack. A recent post on X summed up her view of the Democratic Party: “Ukraine and transing the kids. That’s all they stand for now.”

Such statements have come at a cost. One remark, in particular, had serious financial consequences. After Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee for president last summer and received backing from groups like White Dudes for Harris, Stone mocked the support with a social media post sarcastically captioned “White power!” She later insisted it was a joke, but Hollywood studios saw it differently. Most advertisers on her website pulled their funding.

To Stone, the backlash was yet another example of Hollywood overreacting—the same industry, she argues, that has weakened cinema by prioritizing political agendas over storytelling. In her view, Hollywood’s increasingly left-leaning stance pushed her to the right. Or, as she might put it, borrowing from her beloved 1970s American cinema: like Han Solo, the industry shot first.

“Some days, I forget what the left has become,” she wrote on her Substack last summer. “I assume we still live in a society that values free expression. But we don’t. Not when the left controls the culture. Now, anyone can become a thought criminal or a villain overnight.”

Clarence Moye, a former writer for Stone’s Oscars site, believes that the industry’s harsh response played a role in her transformation. “The more they pushed back against her, the more she pushed back—and the further right she moved,” he said.

Although her site’s revenue has taken a hit, Stone has found a new platform in conservative media. She has penned an op-ed for The New York Post and appeared on Megyn Kelly’s SiriusXM show. After losing advertisers on Awards Daily, she has supplemented her income through her political Substack, which offers subscriptions to readers.

“Hollywood is boring now. The movies are boring. Everything is boring,” Stone said in a February interview.

“Politics isn’t boring. Politics is real life,” she continued. “Look at Trump—he’s running his administration like a TV show, ignoring all the usual rules. He’s an entertainer, and people can’t look away.”

Stone’s passion for movies was shaped in childhood. One summer, amid personal upheaval, she and her sister found solace in the same film, watching it repeatedly. The year was 1975. The movie was Jaws.

More than two decades later, she was arguing on a Usenet forum that Titanic would beat L.A. Confidential for Best Picture. At the time, her prediction was unpopular—but she was right. And she was hooked.

In 1999, she launched her site Oscar Watch (renamed after legal action from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences). In Oscar Wars (2023), Michael Schulman credits Stone as a pioneer of awards blogging. In 2014, New York magazine dubbed her and Gold Derby’s Tom O’Neil “the Adam and Eve of Oscar blogging.”

Dave Karger, a Turner Classic Movies host and former Entertainment Weekly Oscars columnist, recalls her early coverage fondly. “Sasha was one of the most enterprising and passionate Oscars writers I’ve ever encountered,” he said.

Her site took off at the perfect time—just as the blogosphere flourished and Oscars campaigning became an elaborate industry. Soon, an entire Oscars-industrial complex emerged, involving studios, Academy members, and journalists.

“It was never just about the Oscars,” Stone explained. “It was about the buildup. It was about understanding why certain films won.”

The answer, she realized, often had little to do with artistic merit. That had been true since How Green Was My Valley famously beat Citizen Kane for Best Picture in 1942.

Moye remembers Stone’s early advocacy for greater diversity in Hollywood, long before #OscarsSoWhite became a movement. In 2012, for example, she passionately championed Viola Davis (The Help) over Meryl Streep (The Iron Lady) for Best Actress. (Streep ultimately won.)

“I was the first ‘woke’ blogger,” Stone said. But after Trump’s election in 2016, she noticed a shift. She believes the industry became dominated by an ideology that prioritized political messaging over artistic quality. As she wrote in Tablet:

“La La Land was called racist, so Moonlight had to win. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri was deemed racist, so The Shape of Water had to win. By the time Green Book came along, Hollywood had lost its mind.”

In recent years, some explicitly conservative films have found success, from Sound of Freedom to Am I Racist? and Reagan. But Stone believes mainstream Hollywood remains the real power center. “Hollywood isn’t budging on its one-sided perspective,” she wrote in a recent email. “And conservatives haven’t yet built a strong enough alternative.”

Friends say Stone has always had a contrarian streak. “She admires Hollywood’s rebellious films from the ’60s and ’70s—ones that challenged authority,” said Moye.

“But now, Hollywood operates under a rigid checklist of required representation,” he added. “And to her, that’s the opposite of art.”

Some sense a shift on the horizon. Disney has begun retreating from divisive cultural battles. The Oscars, pleased with Conan O’Brien’s largely apolitical hosting, have invited him back next year.

At times, Stone seems less outraged on behalf of conservatives than on behalf of cinema itself. “That bizarre 2016-to-2020 period,” she reflected, “made the Oscars far less interesting.”

Heading into this year’s awards season, she thought it might be her last. But she’s not so sure.

“There are plenty of people waiting for my site to fail,” she said.