As we near the end of awards season, there was one more stop before the ultimate finale at the Oscars on March 2nd. The SAG Awards, hosted last weekend by actress Kristen Bell, are a celebration of the beautiful faces of television and film alone. The voting pool consists of members of SAG-AFTRA, the actor’s union, which makes it a pretty good indicator of who will win at the Oscars in the acting categories, considering actors make up the largest branch of the Academy.
This year, however, what stood out was not the results of the acting awards but the speech given by lifetime achievement award recipient Jane Fonda. Fonda is known for her social activism, beginning with her protesting the Vietnam war all the up to 2019 when she was arrested at a protest with Greenpeace.
Fonda gave an impassioned speech about community and the state of the world. While she did not mention the new administration by name, she made her feelings clear, saying, “a whole lot of people are going to be really hurt by what is happening, what is coming our way.”
She lamented about the beginning of her career in the 1950s, which was during the time of McCarthyism, where many actors were blacklisted due to the belief that they were communists. She described seeing first hand the resistance against Sen. John McCarthy, where some of Hollywood’s biggest names stood up in retaliation. According to Fonda, we are nearing a similar time in the present, imploring her fellow actors to follow suit: “This is it, and it’s not a rehearsal,” she said. “This is big-time serious, folks, so let’s be brave.”
While her entire speech was full of excellent quotable nuggets, the most viral and circulated around the internet was her take on the only “insult” the extreme right-wing party members seem to be able to throw at liberals. The term “woke.” Speaking on the matter she stated, “empathy is not ‘weak’ or ‘woke’ — and by the way, ‘woke’ just means you give a damn about other people.”
See the full list of winners from the SAG Awards below:
Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role: Timothée Chalamet in “A Complete Unknown”
Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role: Demi Moore in “The Substance”
Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role: Kieran Culkin in “A Real Pain”
Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role: Zoe Saldaña in “Emilia Pérez”
Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture: “Conclave”
Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Television Movie or Limited Series: Colin Farrell in “The Penguin”
Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Movie or Limited Series: Jessica Gunning in “Baby Reindeer”
Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series: Hiroyuki Sanada in “Shōgun”
Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series: Anna Sawai in “Shōgun”
Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Comedy Series: Martin Short in “Only Murders in the Building”
Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series: Jean Smart in “Hacks”
Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series: “Shōgun”
Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series: “Only Murders In The Building”
Outstanding Action Performance by a Stunt Ensemble in a Motion Picture: “The Fall Guy”
Outstanding Action Performance by a Stunt Ensemble in a Television Series: “Shōgun”
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