The producers of the 2019 Golden Globes, by and large, did not fuck around when it came to cutting award speeches short. They played off Lady Gaga when she was accepting the award for Best Original Song for “Shallow” from A Star Is Born! They are ruthless!
But even those cold-blooded professional speech-cutters seem to have thought better of playing off Regina King.
King won a Golden Globe for her performance in If Beale Street Could Talk, and as she was finishing up her acceptance speech, she began to talk about the importance of the platform that actors have when they win awards. The music started playing in the background, signaling to King to finish up her speech and get off the stage, but she continued on: “Time’s up. Times two,” she declared. “The reason why we do this is because we understand that our microphones are big and we are speaking for everyone.” And apparently somebody in the control box came to the conclusion that what King had to say was too important to be cut off.
King’s conclusion was worth turning off the music for. “I’m going to use my platform right now to say,” she said, “in the next two years, everything that I produce — I’m making a vow and it’s going to be tough — to make sure that everything that I produce is 50 percent women.”
The advocacy group Women and Hollywood has reported that in 2017, women made up 8 percent of directors, 10 percent of writers, 2 percent of cinematographers, 24 percent of producers, and 14 percent of editors.
Meanwhile, the Center for the Study of Women in Television & Film, in its most recent Celluloid Ceiling report, found that women comprised 20 percent “of all directors, writers, producers, executive producers, editors, and cinematographers working on the top 250 domestic grossing films” of 2018 — an increase of 2 percent over 2017.
King urged others in a position of power across industries to make the same commitment. She was continuing a trend arguably started by Frances McDormand at the 2018 Oscars to use her acceptance speech to advocate for gender equality in a concrete, actionable way. And that’s something even professional speech-cutters are apparently on board with.
