The 25th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards aired last night but “Black Panther” stole the show. The Ryan Coogler film became the first superhero film to win outstanding performance by an ensemble in a motion picture.
In a powerful speech, Chadwick Boseman said, “Well, I’ll be… I didn’t think I was gonna have to speak.” He continued, “This cast, this ensemble. When I think of going to work every day and the passion and the intelligence, the resolve, the discipline that everybody showed, I also think of two questions that we all have received during the course of multiple publicity runs. And one is, ‘Did we know that this movie was going to receive this kind of response?’ Meaning, was it going to make a billion dollars, was it going to still be around during award season? And the second question is, ‘Has it changed the industry’ Has it actually changed the way this industry works, how it sees us?”
Boseman then reference the great Nina Simone, “And my answer is to be young, gifted and Black — because all of us up here, and Andy [Serkis], we include you, too. To be young, gifted and Black, we all know what it’s like to be told that there is not a place for you to be featured, yet you are young, gifted and Black. We know what it’s like to be told there’s not a screen for you to be featured on, a stage for you to be featured on. We know what it’s like to be the tail and not the head. We know what it’s like to be beneath and not above. And that is what we went to work with every day because we knew — not that we would be around during award season or that it would make a billion dollars, but we knew we had something special that we wanted to give the world. That we could be full human beings in the roles that we were playing, that we could create a world that exemplified a world that we wanted to see.”
He ended with, “It’s a pleasure to be celebrated by you, to be loved by you. And one thing I do know: Did it change the industry? I know that you can’t have a ‘Black Panther’ now without a ‘2’ on it. So, we love you. And we celebrate it.”
See the beautiful photos and videos of the cast truly slaying the SAG Awards.
