by The Cowl Editor on January 30, 2020
Film and Television
by Anne DeLello ’20 A&E Staff
On Jan. 19, the 2020 awards show season continued with the 26th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards. The SAG Awards are “the only televised awards ceremony to exclusively honor performers,” according to the show’s website. The 13 awards presented focus on the outstanding performances of the past year in both film and prime time television.
A notable winner from this year’s SAG Awards was Robert De Niro, who was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award. This award was announced in November of 2019, but De Niro was presented with it at the ceremony.
The award honors “career achievement and humanitarian accomplishment” and individuals who encompass the “finest ideals of the acting profession.” Leonardo DiCaprio, who himself has recently won both an Oscar nomination and a SAG nomination for his role in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, presented De Niro with the award.
When De Niro accepted this achievement award, he used the opportunity to comment on the current political climate saying, “There’s right and there’s wrong. And there’s common sense and there’s abuse of power, and as a citizen, I have as much right as anybody—an actor, an athlete, a musician, anybody else—to voice my opinion. And if I have a bigger voice because of my situation, I’m going to use it whenever I see a blatant abuse of power.”
Some other notable wins for actors were Jennifer Aniston with Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series for her role in The Morning Show. Brad Pitt also won for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role with his role in Once Upon A Time in Hollywood. Additionally, Game of Thrones’s Peter Dinklage won Outstanding Male Actor in a Drama Series.
Streaming networks like Amazon Prime and Netflix also had big wins during the SAG Awards. Netflix’s The Crown came out on top as the Oustanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series, and Prime’s The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel was awarded Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series.
The Best Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture was awarded to the film Parasite. The cast of this film made history with this win, as it was the first foreign film in history to win the award. Song Kang-ho, who plays Kim Ki-taek, told the crowd in his acceptance speech that, “I am so honored to receive this award in front of such amazing actors that I admire. I will remember and never forget this beautiful night. Thank you so much.”
These particular wins made for a very entertaining awards show and provided some hints of what is to come as the 2020 awards season continues.