The cast of Stranger Things, Emma Stone and Julia Louis-Dreyfus won at a Screen Actors Guild Awards that has been, in part, a very well-dressed protest against President Donald Trump’s sweeping immigration order.
While protests continued at US airports over Trump’s temporary ban of citizens from seven predominantly Muslim nations, many at the SAG Awards struck a defiant tone. Ashton Kutcher, the first presenter at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, welcomed not just the viewing audience but “anyone in airports that belong in my America.”
Louis-Dreyfus added another honour for her performance on the political satire Veep. She called herself the daughter of an immigrant who fled religious persecution in Nazi-occupied France.
“Because I love this country, I am horrified by its blemishes,” said Louis-Dreyfus. “And this immigrant ban is a blemish and it is un-American.”
Perhaps the most moving speech came from Mahershala Ali, who won best supporting actor for his acclaimed performance in Barry Jenkins’ coming-of-age portrait, Moonlight. Ali said he saw lessons for today in Moonlight, in which he plays a character who makes a difference in a shy, gay Miami boy’s hard life. “We see what happens when you persecute people,” Ali said. “The fold into themselves.”
Ali said his relationship with his mother exemplified tolerance. The son of an ordained minister, Ali converted to Islam 17 years ago.
“We put things to the side,” Ali said of their differences. “I’m able to see her. She’s able to see me. We love each other. The love has grown. That stuff is minutia. It’s not that important.”
But the fieriest speech was by David Harbour, who led the cast of Netflix’s Stranger Things — maybe the night’s biggest surprise winner — on stage. “We will hunt monsters,” he vowed in lengthy remarks that drew a standing ovation.
Like Ali, other Oscar favourites cemented their front-runner status, including Emma Stone for La La Land and Viola Davis for Denzel Washington’s August Wilson adaptation Fences. Davis framed her speech as a thank you to Wilson for honouring the average man, “who happened to be a man of colour.”
“We deserve to be in the canon, in the centre of any narrative that’s written out there. And that’s what August did,” said Davis. “He elevated my father, my mother, uncles, who had 8th and 5th-grade educations. He just encapsulated them in history. So thank you, August.”
The hit Netflix series Orange Is the New Black won best ensemble in a comedy series for the third straight year.
“We stand up here representing a diverse group of people, representing generations of families who have sought a better life here from places like Nigeria, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Columbia, Ireland,” said star Taylor Schilling, while a cast member added “Brooklyn!” “And we know that it’s going to be up to us and all you, probably, to keep telling stories that show what unites us is stronger than the forces that divide us.”
A pair of veteran actors took other TV honours: John Lithgow for best actor in a drama series (The Crown) and Bryan Cranston for his Lyndon Johnson in the HBO movie All the Way.
La La Land may have tied an Oscar record with 14 nominations, set a Golden Globes record with seven wins and won the top prize at Saturday’s Producers Guild Awards, but it wasn’t competing for the top Screen Actors Guild award. Nominated instead for best ensemble are the casts for Moonlight, Manchester by the Sea, Hidden Figures and Captain Fantastic.
Actors, the largest group in the motion picture academy, hold considerable sway. SAG, though, is much larger, with about 160,000 members, compared to about 1,200 actors in the academy.
Rousing speeches
Lily Tomlin was the lifetime achievement honouree. The 77-year-old actress gave a warm, rollicking speech that dispensed both drinking advice and regret over wasting “a lot of time being ambitious about the wrong things.”
“Did you hear? The Doomsday Clock has been moved up to two and a half minutes before midnight,” said Tomlin. “And this award, it came just in the nick of time.”
She pondered what sign she should make for the next protest march: Something about global warming? LGBT issues? Immigration? Later, presenter Sophia Bush wondered what the roles in the TV drama actor category had in common: A paranoid hacker; a successful businessman; a world leader; an heir with ties to the opposition; and a sociopathic chief executive. “If I say what I’m thinking, I’m risking a Twitter war,” deadpanned rapper Common, her co-presenter.
William H. Macy, who won TV actor in a comedy for his derelict character on Showtime’s Shameless, took a different tactic: “I would like to thank president Trump — for making Frank Gallagher seem so normal,” he said.
Taraji P. Henson’s powerful speech had similar themes when she accepted the best cast ensemble win for Hidden Figures, about black female mathematicians who worked at Nasa in the 1960s. “This story is of unity. This story is that what happens when we put our differences aside and we come together as a human race,” she told the audience, who was screaming and cheering wildly. “We win. Love wins every time.”
Sarah Paulson encouraged everyone to donate to the American Civil Liberties Union. “I would like to make a plea for everyone, if they can, any money they have to spare, please donate to the ACLU to protect the rights and liberties of people across this country,” she said during her acceptance speech for TV movie actress in The People va O.J. Simpson, in which she played prosecutor Marcia Clark. “It’s a vital, vital organisation that relies entirely on our support.”
When Cranston won the TV movie actor prize for starring as Lyndon B. Johnson in HBO’s All the Way, he noted that many ask him what Johnson would have thought about Trump. “I honestly feel that 36 would put his arm around 45 and earnestly wish him success,” Cranston said. “And he would also whisper in his ear something he said often, as a form of encouragement and a cautionary tale: ‘Just don’t [expletive] in the soup that all of us gotta eat.’”
Presenter Alia Shawkat took a dig at “alternative facts”: “Like many of our nominees here tonight, we represent people who have come from other cultures. And that’s a real fact,” she said. Presenters Rashida Jones and Riz Ahmad joked that descriptions of the shows up for best drama (“A nation under the thumb of monarchy. An aristocrat on the verge of bankruptcy forced to downsize. Good versus evil. Sex and violence. Life in medieval times. A return to the 1980s and a world upside-down. Outlaw robots running rampant without fear of retribution.”) were are all “headlines we read this morning.”
Lithgow gave a shout-out to Meryl Streep’s now-famous speech at the Golden Globes, which earned her Trump’s ire as an “underrated” actress. Lithgow called her “a great, underrated actress who somehow managed to speak my exact thoughts three weeks ago.”
Meanwhile, during the award show’s intro, ABC’s Scandal star Kerry Washington offered a preemptive defence about why Hollywood stars have every right to speak up. “A lot of people are saying right now that actors shouldn’t express their opinions when it comes to politics,” she said. “But the truth is, actors are activists no matter what, because we embody the worth and humanity of all people.”
