With Oscars on the way, dishy novel offers insider look at fictional actors

Most fans of the Oscar telecast will tell you the best — or, at least, realest — part of the show is when the TV screen shows all five acting nominees, waiting to learn if they’ve won while working on their conciliatory, “yes, they really deserved it”/loser faces.

Daniel D’Addario’s novel, “The Talent,” lives in that moment between “and the nominees are” and “the Oscar goes to.” It begins with the best actress prize about to be presented. (The five nominees are fictional, but part of the book’s fun is guessing on whom they’re based: Is that one Cate Blanchett? Is her rival Jodie Foster? Emma Thompson?).

Then, it backtracks to the event-filled months leading up to what’s become known as “awards season,” which “Schitt’s Creek” character Moira Rose famously declared her favorite season. We meet six possible nominees and learn who is fighting with whom, who is knocking back too many cocktails, who is willing to do just about anything to win and who are competing for the affections of a swarthy co-star.

Especially in its bonkers character names (Contessa, Davina, Bitty), there’s a Chanel No. 5-scented whiff of Jackie Collins in “The Talent,” which practically screams “Don’t read this trash in public!” In a reverse of “Hollywood Wives,” D’Addario’s book features women with interesting careers and men who are either invisible or boring, or both. “The Talent” also is unlike Collins’ oeuvre in another key way: no sex.

It’s still plenty trashy, though. Two of its contenders are bickering over who’s the real star of their movie and, thus, which of them can campaign as best actress and which as best supporting actress (the one who’s sorta like Meryl Streep, but meaner, wins). With shades of Streep and Jessica Lange, two others have competed for the same parts throughout their careers, with one inevitably coming up short.

D’Addario, who has covered the awards for show business bible Variety, clearly knows what he’s talking about. He describes actors jockeying for position at group photo shoots, agents in negotiation for new gigs while their not-yet-loser clients are still hot, forced conviviality at pre-awards banquets, disastrous awards campaign moves (hosting a late-night variety show goes south, the exact opposite of the Oscar bump Timothée Chalamet got for hosting “Saturday Night Live”) and brief moments of genuine connection between women with red carpet dreams.

One thing “The Talent” is not, is hilarious. The lightheartedness of the premise (Who really cares who wins? Quick! Name the reigning best actress) seems to call for humor, and the book jacket describes “The Talent” as “satire,” but it’s not very funny. D’Addario’s writing glides along smoothly but a few more jokes would make it go down even more easily.

Or maybe that’s just me? I kept imagining the wicked fun that, say, Paul Rudnick would have with this premise. D’Addario is going for something subtler as he moves toward awards night (he apparently isn’t allowed to call his awards the Oscars, a possible roadblock that he hurdles with so much finesse, you barely notice).

Having been there/reported on that, D’Addario knows the awards are meaningless and that the actors who come to that realization are the luckiest ones. That’s why he ends “The Talent” with a contender who doesn’t take home the trophy but realizes she came away the winner, just the same.

The Talent

By: Daniel D’Addario.

Publisher: Scout Press, 315 pages, $28.99.