At the 75th Emmy Awards on Monday, several winners took the opportunity to make statements about the world beyond the auditorium.
Accepting the award for her performance in the limited series “Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story,” Niecy Nash-Betts shared for the first time her gratitude to series creator Ryan Murphy, his co-star Evan Peters and his wife Jessica Betts .
“And you know who I want to thank? I want to thank myself for believing in me and doing what they said I couldn't do,” she said while on stage at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. “I want to say to myself in front of all of you, beautiful people: Go ahead, girl, with your bad person! You did that!”
Nash-Betts, who played Glenda Cleveland on the Netflix project, he closed his speech on a more serious note. “Finally, I accept this award on behalf of all Black women and women of color who have not been heard but have been over-policed, like Glenda Cleveland, Sandra Bland, Breonna Taylor,” she concluded. “As an artist, my job is to speak truth to power and honey, I will do it until the day I die.”
Shortly after, when “RuPaul's Drag Race” won the Emmy for reality competition series for the eighth time, creator and host RuPaul took a moment to address right-wing attacks on drag and drag performers across the country .
“If a drag queen wants to read you a story in a library, listen to her, because knowledge is power,” he said. “And if someone tries to restrict your access to power, she is trying to scare you. So listen to a drag queen!
RuPaul accepts the reality competition series Emmy for “RuPaul's Drag Race.”
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
While the Governor's Award was presented to LGBTQ advocacy organization GLAAD for its efforts to support authentic LGBTQ storytelling on screen, President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis noted that its work is far from over and made a passionate call to the action to those who were in the room and watching from home.
“What the world sees on television influences how we treat each other and the decisions we make in our living rooms, schools, at work and at the ballot box,” he said. “The world urgently needs culture-changing stories about transgender people. More people say they have seen a ghost than know a transgender person. When you don't know people, it's easy to demonize them. Visibility creates understanding and opens doors, saves lives.
“Our community has accomplished so much, and yet we are still being victimized and villainized with cruel and harmful lies,” he continued. “Sharing stories is the antidote. And now is the time to take action to support all members of the LGBTQ community, because this story is still being told and we can all be heroes.”
In accepting the award for writing for a drama series, “Succession” creator Jesse Armstrong appeared to allude to growing anti-immigration sentiment in the United States and the United Kingdom, where he is from. “Thank you to the broader creative community in America,” he said. “Our show is about some things that are close to the center of American life and politics, and we have always been met with generosity and good faith.”
“That's part of the American tradition of being very welcoming to outsiders, and it's very nice,” he added. “I am very grateful for the generosity that has been shown to me working in this country.”
And in winning the night's final award for drama series, Armstrong closed his speech with a joke: “This is a show about family, but it's also about when partisan news coverage becomes intertwined with divisive right-wing politics. And after four seasons of satire, as I understand it, that is a problem we have now solved.”
“Beef” creator Lee Sung Jin, whose miniseries turns a road rage incident into a deep exploration of emotional pain and the social dynamics that fuel it, raised the issue of mental health when accepting the limited series trophy .
“A lot of the suicidal ideation on this show was based on things that I and some of the people here have struggled with over the years, so I am very grateful and humbled by everyone who watched the show and reached out to your own ideas. personal struggles,” he said. “It's very comforting… I feel like we live in a world designed to keep us apart; Even here, some of us return home with trophies, others do not. And I think for some of us, when we live in a world like this, we start to think that there is no way anyone can understand you or like you, much less that there is no potential to be loved. And that's why the greatest joy of working on 'Beef' has been working with the people here who love so unconditionally.”
Last year's historic Hollywood strikes were also the topic of conversation at the Emmys. Accepting the award for writing for a variety series, “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” writer Sofia Manfredi thanked Oliver, as well as executive producers Tim Carvell and Liz Stanton, “for how much they supported us during the writers' strike; He supported us all wholeheartedly, even though a third of us are annoying, and it was wonderful.”
Manfredi also thanked the Writers Guild of America, as well as other industry unions. “There is so much solidarity,” she concluded. “The strike seemed long, I didn't feel alone, so thank you very much.”
Unlike some of the winners, Emmys host Anthony Anderson stayed away from addressing hot-button issues himself. However, he closed the broadcast by featuring a clip of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.'s “I Have a Dream” speech, as the event took place on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
