Thaddea Graham to Receive Wilde Card Award at 21st Oscar Wilde Awards

The US-Ireland Alliance will hand its Wilde Card Award to Thaddea Graham, 29, at the 21st annual Oscar Wilde Awards on March 11 at the Ebell in Los Angeles, three days before the Academy Awards. The announcement fills the second honoree slot for an event that now pairs Graham with Irish American actor Jack Reynor, named last month, and adds a performance by Irish synth-pop singer Shobsy.

What is the Wilde Card Award?

The award targets emerging talent rather than established careers. US-Ireland Alliance president Trina Vargo defined the mechanism plainly: the prize "is presented to someone we expect you'll hear a lot more from."

The list of previous recipients shows the pattern the organization wants voters and casting directors to notice:

• Saoirse Ronan
• Barry Keoghan
• Sarah Bolger
• Eve Hewson, Graham's co-star on Bad Sisters

Why Graham fits the slot

Graham's credits run across three streamers and two prestige directors. She played therapist O in the final season of Netflix's Sex Education in 2023, detective Una Houlihan in the second season of Apple TV's Bad Sisters in 2024, and the roommate of Elle Fanning's character this year in Margo's Got Money Troubles. In 2021 she led Sherlock Holmes' band of street urchins in Netflix's The Irregulars and recurred on the BBC's Doctor Who.

Her film work concentrates around two directors. She appeared alongside Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri, Andrew Garfield and Michael Stuhlbarg in Luca Guadagnino's After the Hunt, and she reunites with Guadagnino on the upcoming film Artificial, in which Garfield plays OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. She also played the personal assistant to George Clooney's actor character in Noah Baumbach's Jay Kelly (2025).

What the honor recognizes

Graham was born in China and found as a baby, a few days old, on the steps of a building in Changsha. Her parents adopted her at 13 months and brought her to County Down, making her one of the first Chinese-born children adopted in Northern Ireland.

She framed that history as the core of her career in an April interview with The London Times: "I always say I would not be here had it not been for the kindness of strangers." She extended the point to her primary-school teacher, who introduced a Chinese New Year celebration that the teacher still runs after Graham's departure.

At an FYC Emmy event for Bad Sisters last year, Graham told the Times that attendees from Asian backgrounds praised both her lead role and her accent: "It's amazing seeing you as one of the lead characters... And also for you to have a different accent — for you not to have the accent people might expect."

What Shobsy brings to the program

Shobsy supplies the evening's musical segment. He completed a UK and European tour last year with SO Recordings labelmates MY BABY, then played SXSW. In July he performed at an Irish music industry showcase hosted by Ireland's president, Catherine Connolly, at her Dublin residence, and he recently released the EP The World Will Not Remember with the single "Perfect."

The Oscar Wilde Awards honor Irish contributors — and some who are not — across film, television and music. The event now counts down to its March 11 date with both honorees and its performer set.