When Joaquin Phoenix used his Bafta acceptance speech to call out the “systemic racism” of the film industry last week, the uncomfortable silence that fell upon his A-list audience was reflective of a particularly confusing awards season. Phoenix was praised for his stance later, but in the moment, stars seemed unsure what face they should be wearing for the inevitable on-camera reaction shots.
Immediately after the election of Donald Trump, awards ceremonies were dominated by jabs at him and his agenda. But three years on, stars have been digging deeper. Michelle Williams used her Emmy and Golden Globe speeches to stress the importance of equal pay and the right to choose, respectively, while Patricia Arquette spoke about transgender rights while accepting her Emmy.
“The warmed-over political speech of even just a few years ago won’t do; winners need to be direct, forceful and correct,” Richard Lawson, the chief critic for Vanity Fair, told the Guardian.
While Phoenix has used his time on stage this season to make more pointed critiques, other acting front-runners – Renée Zellweger, Laura Dern and Brad Pitt – have opted for a more traditional combination of humour and gratitude. Speaking in anticipation of Sunday night’s speeches, Lawson added: “I hope for some (good) surprises.”
This year’s ceremony will be host-less for the second year in a row, which puts more pressure to provide memorable moments on not only the winners but on a starry roll-call of presenters. This year’s crop will include Steve Martin, Spike Lee, Kristen Wiig, Salma Hayek, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Olivia Colman, Will Ferrell and Gal Gadot.
But previous years have also shown the impact that personal, rather than political, speeches can have. In 2019, when she became the first woman of colour to win the best production design Oscar, for Black Panther, Hannah Beachler tearfully read from her phone, giving professional and personal thanks while highlighting how those around her had helped strengthen who she is. “What I wrote, I wrote from my heart, and I spoke true words,” she now remembers. “The sheer magnitude of that moment was heavy, overwhelming, joyful, bittersweet, all the things. It’s nothing you can ever truly articulate.”
When JK Simmons won the best supporting actor Oscar in 2015, for his role in Whiplash, it was the umpteenth speech he’d given that season. “I was in the fortunate position where everybody I knew told me I was a slam-dunk all the way along,” he told the Guardian. It allowed him to focus on something different for each occasion and, at the Oscars, he chose to pay tribute to his family and urged everyone watching to call their mothers – a plea that ended up having a greater impact than he anticipated. “There were stories, both from people that I knew and from all over the world, of people who connected as a result of that; of people who had been at odds with their parents, or people who had just been distant,” he said. “I felt like I had a positive effect.”
When asked about the increased pressure actors now face to be more political in their speeches, he admitted that it’s a development he has mixed feelings about. “I’m not a particularly political person, so that doesn’t occur to me,” he said. “I could certainly see both points of view. If someone feels passionately about something, as I did about my wife and my kids and my parents, then you’re never gonna have that big a captive audience again, so you should speak about what’s most important to you and dear to your heart. And if that’s making a political statement, then I think that’s what you need to do. Then, of course, there are other people who say: ‘Eh, come on, this is not rocket science or brain surgery, we’re not gonna solve world peace here on the stage at the Kodak theater so let’s keep it about showbusiness.’ I don’t think there’s a wrong answer.”
