At the 75th Emmy Awards on Monday, multiple winners seized 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 first shared her gratitude for series creator Ryan Murphy, co-star Evan Peters and wife Jessica Betts.
“And you know who I want to thank? I want to thank me, for believing in me and doing what they said I could not do,” she said while onstage at Los Angeles’ Peacock Theater. “I want to say to myself in front of all you beautiful people: Go on girl, with your bad self! You did that!”
RuPaul accepts the reality competition series Emmy for “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Nash-Betts, who portrayed Glenda Cleveland in the Netflix project, closed her speech on a more serious note. “Finally, I accept this award on behalf of every Black and brown woman who has gone unheard yet over-policed, like Glenda Cleveland, like Sandra Bland, like Breonna Taylor,” she concluded. “As an artist, my job is to speak truth to power and baby, I’ma do it ‘til the day I die.”
Shortly thereafter, 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 throughout the country.
“If a drag queen wants to read you a story at a library, listen to her, because knowledge is power,” he said. “And if someone tries to restrict your access to power, they are trying to scare you. So listen to a drag queen!”
Last year’s historic Hollywood strikes were also a topic of Emmys conversation. Accepting the award for writing for a variety series, “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” senior writer Joanna Rothkopf thanked Oliver, as well as executive producers Tim Carvell and Liz Stanton, “for just how much they backed us up during the writers strike — they wholeheartedly supported all of us, even though a third of us are annoying, and it was wonderful.”
Rothkopf also thanked the Writers Guild of America, as well as the industry’s other unions. “There’s so much solidarity,” she concluded. “The strike felt long, it did not feel lonely, so thank you so much.”