Regina Hall’s Understated Turn in One Battle After Another Deserved More

One Battle After Another has emerged as an awards-season juggernaut with 13 Academy Award nominations and a stacked cast, yet one supporting performance has been frequently overlooked. Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro and Teyana Taylor earned nominations, but the film’s four acting nods feel narrow given the ensemble work — notably Regina Hall’s.

Hall plays Deandra, a veteran of the revolutionary French 75 tasked with watching over Willa Ferguson after she becomes a target of Col. Lockjaw. Cast against her usual comedic persona, Hall turns in a remarkably restrained performance: minimal words, a muted gaze and an unflappable presence that contrasts with the broader theatrical choices around her.

Paul Thomas Anderson adapts Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland only loosely, trimming much of the novel and sidelining the book’s narrator, DL Chastain. That reduction could have left Deandra peripheral, but Hall makes the role feel central, using subtle gestures and silence to carry the story’s emotional weight.

regina hall, leonardo dicaprio, sean penn, del toro, teyana taylor, paul thomas, thomas pynchon, vineland, academy awards, supporting role