Chadwick Boseman’s Acceptance Speech for Black Panther ’s SAG Win Will Give You Goose Bumps
Michelle Ruiz
There was a palpable sense of pleasant surprise at the SAG Awards on Sunday night, when, after a largely meh and predictable ceremony, Black Panther won the top honor—Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture—beating the casts of A Star Is Born, BlacKkKlansman, Bohemian Rhapsody, and Crazy Rich Asians. Lupita Nyong’o jumped for joy! The usually serious presenter Jodie Foster blurted out, “Yesss!” Even the star of the billion-dollar, boundary-breaking superhero movie, Chadwick Boseman, admitted: “I didn’t think I was going to have to speak.”
But once he did step up to the mic, Boseman did not disappoint, seizing on the moment to acknowledge “genius” director Ryan Coogler (because, never mind Bradley Cooper’s Oscar snub, there’s a serious argument that Coogler has not been adequately celebrated this awards season) as well as Black Panther’s impact on pop culture and, hopefully, diversity in Hollywood.
Boseman said the cast has been asked repeatedly of the blockbuster, “Has it changed the industry? Has it actually changed the way this industry works, how it sees us?” His goose bumps–inducing response was to celebrate the “young, gifted, and black” cast (while shouting out Andy Serkis, who was also onstage), including Nyong’o, Michael B. Jordan (in a Virgil Abloh for Louis Vuitton harness), Danai Gurira, Angela Bassett, and Sterling K. Brown (who also won Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series with his This Is Us costars).
“All of us up here know—Andy, we include you, too,” Boseman said. “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 . . . We knew that 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.”
There has been a vague, underlying sense from some sectors of Hollywood that simply nominating Black Panther—particularly at the Oscars—should be celebration enough; that a superhero movie, much less one with a historic African-American cast, should just be thankful to be nominated by governing bodies that have suffered from serious blind spots. That misguided expectation made it all the more gratifying and emotional to watch Black Panther not just be nominated but win big. It felt like a rare, cosmic moment of Hollywood alignment: For once, an awards show actually honored a film that truly defined the culture of the year!
“Did [Black Panther] change the industry?” Boseman repeated. The forthcoming sequel speaks for itself. “You can’t have a Black Panther now without a 2 on it,” he said.
And after its SAG win, another question will swirl around Black Panther: Does it now have the momentum to win at the Oscars, where it’s nominated for Best Picture, among more critically lauded fare like Roma, Green Book, and The Favourite? After Boseman’s speech—made in front of a live and televised audience of actors, who likely comprise the Academy’s largest voting body—it certainly seems to have a shot.
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