Last night during the Golden Globes, the late actor Chadwick Boseman won Best Actor in a Motion Picture, Drama for his role in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Boseman passed away from colon cancer last year, and so his widow, Taylor Simone Ledward, accepted the award for him in a beautiful, emotional speech.
Ledward said (via THR), “He would thank God. He would thank his parents. He would thank his ancestors for their guidance and their sacrifices.”
“He would say something beautiful,” she continued. “Something inspiring, something that would amplify that little voice inside of us that tells us you can, that tells you to keep going, that calls you back to what you were meant to be doing in this moment.”
“I don’t have his words but we have to take all the moments to celebrate those we love,” Ledward said at the end of her speech.
I felt really emotional listening to Ledward because it still feels surreal that Chadwick Boseman isn’t with us anymore. 2020 still feels like this lingering weight on the heart, and his is one of the pieces to that pain. It was beautiful to see him recognized by the Golden Globes if only for the symbolic meaning of that.
Not to mention that he is only the fourth Black actor winner in this category, following fellow Black Panther costar Forest Whitaker in The Last King of Scotland, Denzel Washington in The Hurricane, and Sidney Poitier in Lilies in the Field.
It is a small ray of positivity amongst all the issues surrounding diversity concerning the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s complete lack of Black members. Yes, last night we saw a lot of milestones, and those are well earned and well deserved. That doesn’t mean we take the foot off of their necks.
According to The Hollywood Reporter:
Chloe Zhao became just the second woman (after Barbra Streisand in 1984) and first Asian woman to win best director (previously, Ang Lee was the only Asian helmer to earn the accolade, in both 2001 and 2006). Lee Isaac Chung, whose American film Minari was shunted off to the foreign-language category, was the other Asian winner of the night. And The United States vs. Billie Holiday‘s first-time leading lady Andra Day was a surprise winner for best actress in a motion picture, drama, becoming only the second non-white woman to win in the category (Whoopi Goldberg was the first, 35 years ago).
That is not a good look. To have such huge gaps between these wins is completely absurd, and while, like I said before, these awards were very well earned, that doesn’t mean there isn’t work to do. These awards matter, sadly, in this industry, and if they are gonna matter, then they need to do the work.
(via The Hollywood Reporter, image: Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)
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