With the official nomination announcement just a couple short weeks away, Oscar season is in full swing, and everybody loves a surprise category spoiler. In 2015, female performers had a particularly strong showing at the movies, leading to an overstuffed slate of potential Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress nominees. But actresses Kiki Kitana Rodriguez and Mya Taylor, the dark horses to end all dark horses, have recently taken on a champion of their cause who might just have the necessary public profile to push them over the top.

Caitlyn Jenner, neck-and-neck with Laverne Cox for the prestigious title of Most Famous Trans Woman in America, has taken a special interest in Mya Taylor’s fledgling Oscar campaign and has taken matters into her own hands. A trans actress herself, starring in a film that is in no small way about the trials and tribulations of living life as a trans woman, it's no surprise that Taylor has caught Jenner’s attentions. The Olympic athlete has announced that she will host a special For Your Consideration screening of Tangerine at Los Angeles’ Landmark Theatre on January 4 in cooperation with Magnolia Pictures, the independent studio handling the film. As the Taylor campaign picks up steam and asserts itself as something that must be taken seriously, it’s more than a little exciting to see a trans performer finally infiltrate the historically homogenous ranks of Oscar hopefuls.

Slightly complicating matters are a few off-color remarks that Jenner made during a recent interview with TIME Magazine about living as a trans woman. It’s emboldening to lift Jenner up as a symbol of goodness and progress, but she’s prone to human folly, and proved as much when she told the interviewer, “I think it’s much easier for a trans woman or a trans man who authentically kind of looks and plays the role. So what I call my presentation. I try to take that seriously. I think it puts people at ease. If you're out there and, to be honest with you, if you look like a man in a dress, it makes people uncomfortable.” She has since owned these comments and made a full apology, and her decision to throw her considerable weight behind Tangerine is a fine start to making amends.

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