BACK ISSUE

In Our ‘Thanking the Academy’ Era

Who amongst us hasn’t pretended our bottle of shampoo was an Oscar and thanked the Academy? Today on Back Issue, we talk through the most memorable acceptance speeches, from Sally Field’s often misquoted “You really like me!” speech to Halle Berry’s historic win to Sheryl Lee Ralph’s musical twist. With help from Aisha Harris and Wesley Morris, Josh unpacks the impact of acceptance speeches and what makes the great ones so great.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

Back Issue Intro: Beyonce? You look like Luther Vandross. Ho, but make it fashion. I don't get no sleep because of y'all. It's Britney, bitch. We were rooting for you, Tiffany. We were all rooting for you. But I ain’t one to gossip… Who said that?

Josh Gwynn: Welcome to back issue, a weekly podcast that revisits formative moments in pop culture that we still think about. I'm Josh Gwynn. It's almost springtime. March is here, Pisces. They're out here thriving. The flowers are starting to go to full bloom, which means my allergies are killing me. But most importantly, Hollywood's doling out little gold statues left and right. That's right. It's award season! Today on Back Issue, we're diving deep on one very special part of award season of award shows, even the aught of the acceptance speech. Later on in the episode, I'll be dissecting one really, really big and important speech. At least it was important to me because in my 13-year-old brain, I thought racism was over. Halle Berry's speech at the 2002 Oscars. I'm going to be talking about it with the one and only Wesley Morris. He's a critic at the New York Times.

Wesley Morris: The thing that was really moving about this for me was that you want to go up there and help this person through this.

Josh Gwynn: But first here with me to talk about all the ingredients for the perfect award speech. I'm joined by co-host of NPR's Pop culture. Happy hour. Aisha Harris. Hey, Aisha.

Aisha Harris: Hey. I've been practicing my speech for forever, since I was a child.

Josh Gwynn: Me too. What did you say?

Aisha Harris: I think it changed a lot. It was usually just like, "Thank you. Thank you, family, friends, I love you. It's been great." Generic stuff.

Josh Gwynn: I love a mirror. I love the remote control. I needed the proper setup in order to just imagine and immerse myself. Before we dive in, I'd like to talk about why award speeches are so captivating. So Aisha, what makes an award speech memorable for you?

Aisha Harris: I feel like the ones that are the most memorable, especially in today's day and age, are the ones that tend to be the most succinct to some extent. So they're easily memeable in a way. They're the types of things where you can kind of cherry-pick that one moment. And also just sincerity I think is really important. Obviously these are performers, these are actors, and yes, sometimes the speeches that are prepared are still memorable, but I think the ones that feel the most off the cuff are the ones that really, really stand out and seem like a moment where we're not used to seeing these people kind of taken aback or surprised or just-

Josh Gwynn: Vulnerable.

Aisha Harris: Vulnerable, not in a perfect state.

Josh Gwynn: And I'm thinking especially in the pre-internet era for audiences, award shows might have been the rarest of occurrences where you would see an actor in the wild, as themselves. And for actors, it was an occasion for them to be able to speak to a large audience, millions of people as themselves, not as a character. And I think that's why today we wanted to look at speeches from actors.

Aisha Harris: Yeah, exactly. I mean, yeah, because now today, obviously all of these performers are often coming to us through their Instagram pages, but before they allowed us to get a sneak peek into their personal lives, this was kind of one of the only other ways we could see them in sort of its state that is beyond their control.

Josh Gwynn: It's live TV. You can't control anything.

Aisha Harris: Yes, no. So if you're stumbling up the stairs like Jennifer Lawrence did to get your award. You can't plan that.

Josh Gwynn: And I think that when we start talking about memorable award speeches, we have to think about the context, not just what happened. And I think that's a really important thing to keep in mind when we think about our first speech here, maybe the most quoted award speech when Sally Field won her second Oscar in 1985 for Places in the Heart.

CLIP: But I want to say thank you to you. I haven't had an Orthodox career and I wanted more than anything to have your respect. The first time I didn't feel it, but this time I feel it and I can't deny the fact that you like me right now, you like me.

Josh Gwynn: A lot of people hold onto that line. "You like me, you really like me!" As someone begging for Hollywood's approval. But isn't what happened. Sally had won her first Oscar a few years earlier for Norma Ray Union Sign in the air, but she still kind of felt like the industry wasn't taking her seriously. She was in sitcoms like Gidget, and she was in one called The Flying Nun, which has a special place in my heart because she's in a habit and she just flies around. So winning for the second time here, what she actually is saying is something closer to like, "Wow, you really respect me", not just, "Wow, you really like me."

Aisha Harris: It's also kind of a humble brag. She's like, "The first time I won".

Josh Gwynn: Exactly.

Aisha Harris: But she's just like, I didn't really feel it. I wasn't present or I wasn't in a moment or I was unsure of myself and now that I've won this again, I can tell that you actually like me. So I think that's where, "You really, really like me", that misquoted part comes from where it's just an emphasis on how effervescent she seems in this moment.

Josh Gwynn: Yeah, there's just this positive thing about Sally Field that has kind of fallen out of vogue. I guess just times are rough and why are you positive?

Aisha Harris: Yes. And that sort of eagerness, we saw it decades later with Anne Hathaway, right?

Josh Gwynn: That's a great comparison. And when she won that Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for Les Mis, that was like 2013, peak Anne Hathaway over exposure, over eagerness era. Everyone hated her on the internet.

Aisha Harris: How do you feel about her first words being It came true.

Anne Hathaway: It came true. Oh, thank you so much to the academy for this.

Aisha Harris: It seems like the audience was just like-

Josh Gwynn: Eye roll.

Aisha Harris: There's dead silence.

Josh Gwynn: I feel like it's one of those moments where it felt forced because it was forced. Anne Hathaway, she gave this interview a couple years later where she was like, "Yeah, I won the Oscar and people thought it was performative because it kind of was." She said that she felt a lot of pressure to emote and perform a certain way and have this reaction that she thought she was supposed to have. And that's not an easy position for someone who's always taking hits for being performative, that's not an easy position for them to be in.

Aisha Harris: I know. I mean, look, yes, big theater kid Energy. I know it's a lot. Maybe as a former theater kid, I have a little bit more empathy and sympathy for her, but it always felt a little too harsh.

Josh Gwynn: So at the beginning of this conversation, you mentioned some criteria that make a good award speech, whether it felt sincere and if it felt off the cuff, even if it was written. So Aisha, with this in mind, I want to listen to the speech that Ariana deBose gave at the 2022 Oscars when she won Best Supporting Actress for West Side Story. Because I kind of feel like this speech manages to feel authentic even though we all know it was pre-written. And I want to know if you feel the same.

CLIP: Imagine this little girl in the backseat of a white Ford Focus. Look into her eyes. You see a, openly queer woman of color, an Afro-Latina who found her strength in life through art. And that's what I believe we're here to celebrate. Yeah. Yeah. So to anybody who has ever questioned your identity, ever, ever, ever, or find you, find yourself living in the gray spaces? I promise you this, there is indeed a place for us. Thank you to the academy and thank you all.

Aisha Harris: So two things. First, this is obviously prepared in a way it's not off the cuff, but the difference here, I think from what Anne Hathaway and also even Sally Field had going is that she also as an Afro-Latina openly queer woman, she didn't have to, but she felt compelled to address that in the room.

Josh Gwynn: And put it in context.

Aisha Harris: And so it's not just about her, it's about a bigger thing. And I think that's what we often see on the rare occasions when people from underrepresented groups actually wind up winning the awards. The speech becomes about that and there's a way that that could feel sort of grandstanding or performative. But I think in this case, for me at least, it totally works. I think she chose all the right words. She said it in the most succinct way. She acknowledged who she wanted to acknowledge, and it's a moving moment. Even though you know she prepared those words, it still feels real and true.

Josh Gwynn: Okay. On one hand, we have these speeches like the kind of standard "Oscar speech", like the sincere speech where people are trying to show us their authentic selves to varying degrees of success.

Aisha Harris: Yes.

Josh Gwynn: On the other hand, sometimes people go the exact opposite and they lead with funny, they lead with comedy. I personally love when people commit to a bit, except for that one time with Jimmy Kimmel, when Jimmy pretended to be passed out on the stage when Quinta Brunson was winning her first Emmy for writing for a comedy series.

CLIP: Jimmy Wake Up I won. Jimmy. Okay.

Josh Gwynn: Get off the stage!

Aisha Harris: Please.

Josh Gwynn: And Julia Louis-Dreyfus is kind of known for doing this because, while she's won eight acting Emmy, so it's kind of like, "Huh, what am I going to do this year? Got to come up with another idea." So let's look at a couple of ways. She's approached the "funny speech". Let's start with her 2012 Emmy speech for Best Actress in a comedy series for Veep.

CLIP: Thank you so, so much. I'm a bit overwhelmed. Oh my God. First of all, I would like to thank NBC, Parks and Rec, my beautiful boys Archie and Abel.

Josh Gwynn: So the joke is that after learning that she won, Amy Poehler gives her a hug and they switch speeches.

Aisha Harris: Yeah. Which makes you think that perhaps this could have gone either way. Amy would've done the same thing, I'm assuming.

Josh Gwynn: Right, exactly. Exactly. And when she's won again the next year, she brought up Tony Hale, the actor that her aid, like her personal assistant on Veep, up on stage with her, and he's whispering in her ear so that she knows exactly what to say next.

CLIP: I'd like to thank our-
CLIP: Family.

CLIP: My family, Brad Hall and Henry Hall and Charlie Hall. My children are here this evening.

CLIP: You love them so much.

CLIP: And I love them so much.

Aisha Harris: I mean, I am not as high on bits during award ceremonies, but I give a pass because, well, for one thing, it goes specifically with that character that she is winning for. So it makes total sense. Also, she is Queen, she is Comedy Queen, and to bring in friends or real life coworkers, colleagues like that to play in on the bit, it's fun, it's unexpected.

Josh Gwynn: What would you say if I told you that I had the Avengers version of bringing your friends in on the bit?

Aisha Harris: Let's see. Let's see.

Josh Gwynn: Okay, so it's Best Lead Actress in a comedy series at the 2011 Primetime Emmys. And what happens is all the nominees have their names called.

CLIP: Amy Poehler, Parks and Recreation.

CLIP: Melissa McCarthy, Mike and Molly,

CLIP: Martha Plimpton, Raising Hope.

Josh Gwynn: But instead of staying in their seat, you're supposed to at an award show, they all get on stage like it's a beauty pageant.

Aisha Harris: I totally forgot about this.

Josh Gwynn: All of the nominees are in on the bit.

Aisha Harris: I love it.
Josh Gwynn: And they're all holding hands.

CLIP: I just want to say girls, everyone is a winner and I know that you're going to go on to serve this body with distinction, and the Emmy goes to Melissa McCarthy.

Josh Gwynn: And they bring crown out and flowers.

CLIP: Holy these smokes. Wow. It's my first and best pageant ever.

Aisha Harris: I mean, I'd totally forgotten about this, but it's kind of a classic. And again, it's the type of thing you can really only do once. You could try to do it again, but it wouldn't have the same effect. And also it would make the award shows even longer than they already are. It's like it adds on an extra minute or so, and we need those precious minutes because these shows are already too long.

Josh Gwynn: They really are.

Aisha Harris: But yes, I'm glad you introduced that one to the conversation. It's great.

Josh Gwynn: Another way that people avoid the sincerity trap is by keeping it short and sweet

CLIP:  And the Emmy goes to, Merritt Wever, Nurse Jackie.

CLIP: God, thank you. Oh, no, thanks so much. Thank you so much. I got to go. Bye.

Josh Gwynn: It's Merritt Wever from Nurse Jackie thinking that she's me because this is exactly what I would do. And I think the humor is the fact that you walk up there and you feel completely overwhelmed faced with that crowd and not many people watching at home. It's like relatable. It's understandable. It's what we feel like we would all do. Can you think of another time where a speech won you over with its brevity?

Aisha Harris: Yeah. I mean, we've already talked about one Anita from West Side Story who's won, so we might as well talk about the second one as well. Rita Moreno's speech when she won for West Side Story, she got up there and she was just like, here I am. And it was very quick, wham bam. Like that was it.

CLIP: I can't believe it. Good Lord. I leave you with that.

Josh Gwynn: Yeah. So that was Moreno with a 1, 2, 3, 11 word speech at the 1961 Oscars.

Aisha Harris: It's so funny because I recently visited the Academy Museum, and so they have a room where they play a bunch of the old speeches, and if you stay in the room long enough, you'll hear all these speeches that are going on for 30, 40 seconds, minutes long, and then you get to her and it's just like, all right.

Josh Gwynn: It's like a loop of her walking up to the stage.

Aisha Harris: Basically. Yeah.

Josh Gwynn: Okay. So we have so far the sincere speech and we have the funny speech, and I think the other big category is the political speech. And in my head, when I think of political speech, there's one that comes to my mind immediately.

CLIP: Hello, my name is Sacheen Littlefeather. I'm Apache and I'm president of the National Native American Affirmative Image Committee. I'm representing Marlon Brando this evening,

Josh Gwynn: When Marlon Brando won the Oscar for Best Actor in 1973, instead of walking up there to get his little gold statue, he sent a young woman, Sacheen Littlefeather on his behalf. Not to accept the award, but to reject the award and what felt like the academy itself.

CLIP: And the reasons for this being are the treatment of American Indians today by the film industry, excuse me. And on television, in movie reruns, and also with recent happenings at Wounded Knee. I beg at this time that I have not intruded upon this evening and that we will in the future, our hearts and our understandings will meet with love and generosity. Thank you. On behalf of Marlon Brando.

Aisha Harris: I've thought about this speech in particular a lot. I have mixed feelings about it because I think overall, Marlon Brando, he was not perfect, but he was an ally in some respects at a time when it was much more dangerous to be an ally than it is today. And I understand what he was trying to do, but I also feel at the same time that letting her go up there and bear the brunt of that is kind of a cop out.

Josh Gwynn: You can just see her face when the boos start.

Aisha Harris: Yes, there were boos and part of the reason there were boos was because she was actually critiquing not just representation in a vacuum, but representation as Hollywood depicts it. And when it came to the way Native Americans were being shown on screen and the way they're still shown on screen in many ways, that critique of the people in the room is something you don't usually see. It's like you all are the ones who are perpetuating these stereotypes and they're like, no, we will not stand for this. Which is another reason why I just feel as though in a way, he was kind of throwing her to the wolves, and I would feel a little bit better about that speech had he done it himself or brought her up with him. Maybe she could say, I don't think she should be silenced. I want her to be able to say those things, but I also think be an ally, man. Be up there.

Josh Gwynn: Yeah. So we've talked about all these different kinds of speeches, the sincere speech, the funny speech, the political speech, and also we're at the end of award season right now. So I'm wondering, is there a speech that you've heard in the past year that's doing one of these things well or managing to do something differently altogether?

Aisha Harris: Well, I think one that's very recent is the one that Michelle Williams gave for the Gotham Award. She won sort of a performer tribute award, and it's really, really beautiful.

CLIP: Mary Beth Peil played my grams on Dawson's Creek. She told me stories about this place, New York Fucking City, and she said it was somewhere that I could go and I could build a life. She said that I should try doing theater. I started reading plays and talking to her about them, and she urged me on, "Yes, yes, that's wonderful, my girl, you should do that. You should try that."

Aisha Harris: That relationship and that rapport with one of her elders I think really speaks to the acknowledgement that you don't get to where you are without other people helping you and supporting you.

CLIP: I wasn't an artist or a mother. I wasn't even a high school graduate. Honestly, I was barely even a Michelle. I had just gotten people to stop calling me Shelly. But now I was Mary Beth's girl, and that made me a somebody.

Aisha Harris: It's always nice when you see performers looking back on the people who may not have been the most famous, and they acknowledge where they came from.

Josh Gwynn: I think a recent speech that stuck out to me was Sheryl Lee Ralph winning for Best Supporting Actress at the Emmy's for Abbott Elementary. And she just had the most Auntie Ancestor-fied speech delivery that I didn't know that I needed.

CLIP: (singing) Am an endangered species, but I sing a victim song. I am a woman, I am an artist. And I know where my voices belongs.

Aisha Harris: Just the fact that she stood up there and opened it with a song, which is something you normally would only see on maybe the Grammy's or the Tony's, not necessarily Emmy's, and she's calling back. She's like, "Y'all going to remember that I was the original Deena on Broadway. Let's not forget. I do it all. I sing, I act. I'm a comedian. I can do all that stuff. And I've been here." And that is what that moment was.

Josh Gwynn: Absolutely. And if it were just the song, it would've been amazing. But then she followed up with a speech that left everybody misty eyed. It was just as powerful.

CLIP: To anyone who has ever, ever had a dream and thought your dream wasn't, wouldn't, couldn't come true. I am here to tell you that this is what believing looks like. This is what striving looks like, and don't you ever, ever give up on you.

Josh Gwynn: It's not just about the words that are happening on the stage. It's about being able to marry the words that are happening on the stage to a larger story about someone's trajectory. Growing up, if you watched Sheryl Lee Ralph, I mean, she was the mom in Moesha. She was the mom and Sister Act 2 telling Lauren Hill that the choir is out. And there's just a level of Black fame that some actors and actresses achieve where they've played everybody's mama, they've played everyone's auntie. And so they kind of exist in Black people's imaginations in those same sort of spaces. And so you can see when Sheryl Lee Ralph, who is someone who hasn't been awarded the awards that she deserves for her career, gets called up to the stage, she can't believe it, but you see all of the Black actors around her like pulling her train to make sure that she's fine walking her up to the stage because their mom just won. You know what I mean? Their auntie just won. And I think that not only does that give her the ability to take up more space on the stage, and everyone just be excited with the fact that she's being a ham, but it just adds this extra layer of context onto the speech. I mean, she's Sheryl Lee Ralph. She does no wrong. She is no wrong. She wears what she wants. And she was on Fenty's last runway show. She's amazing.

Josh Gwynn: So Aisha, now that we've listened to all these speeches, I'm wondering if there's any new patterns that you're noticing about what makes a good speech?

Aisha Harris: Surprise. There's always a little hint of surprise that makes it memorable and that makes us continue to talk about these speeches decades after they've happened.

Josh Gwynn: Thanks so much for hanging out and watching these speeches with me, Aisha. It was so much fun.

Aisha Harris: It was a pleasure. Thanks so much, Josh.

Josh Gwynn: I could not do this episode would be remiss to do this episode. Would consider this episode a complete failure if I did not talk about one Miss Halle Berry in her infamous Oscar speech. And guess what? I get to do that with Wesley Morris right after the break.

****MID-ROLL AD BREAK****

Josh Gwynn: I'm sitting here with none other than critic at the New York Times host of Still Processing two times Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Wesley Morris.

Wesley Morris: Hi, Josh.

Josh Gwynn: The time has come for Wesley and I to take a deep dive into the best award speech according to me, of all time, Halle Berry, 2002 Oscars when she won best actress for Monster's Ball.

CLIP: This moment is so much bigger than me. This moment is for Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne, Diahann Carroll.

Wesley Morris: I would say that is one of the great speeches, I mean at any award show and her understanding of what the moment was and the way she understands and puts the win and what she's about to say in the context of all the people who were never able to give a speech like that.

Josh Gwynn: Right? And of course, the win is significant, duh, because she's the first Black woman to ever win Best Actress. And I want to unpack Halle's full speech in a few minutes, really roll out the red carpet for it, if you will. But first I think we should talk a little bit about what led up to this moment, both in Halle's career and in Hollywood. Before Halle won the Oscar in 2002, there'd only been a handful of Black actors that had won an Oscar in the 74 years beforehand. And other than Sidney Poitier, it's all supporting roles. So you had Hattie McDaniel with Gone With the Wind, you had Whoopi Goldberg for Ghost, you in danger, girl, you had Cuba Gooding Jr for Jerry McGuire.

Wesley Morris: Denzel Washington, Louis Gossett Jr. If you think about the way that Black people had been winning Academy Awards or just focusing on what they were nominated for doing, it's usually for supporting work. It's usually for supporting white people doing stuff.

Josh Gwynn: And it's like white section. The Academy members who vote on the Oscars were and still are overwhelmingly white and male, which makes those rare wins for Black nominees all the more noteworthy.

Wesley Morris: I mean, Whoopi Goldberg winning for Ghost, she was not my first choice if I'm filling out an Oscar ballot,

Josh Gwynn: Wesley!

Wesley Morris: I'm just saying if you could only pick one person, I'm picking Lorraine Bracco in Goodfellas. But I remember knowing that Whoopi Goldberg was going to win that night and just being so excited that it was going to happen.

Josh Gwynn: And Whoopi would win Best Supporting Actress in 1991. And it kicked off a decade where we saw more Black actors breaking through in lead roles, including a young former Miss World contestant turn actor named Halle Berry. When is the first time that you were aware of Halle Berry as an actress?

Wesley Morris: Okay, so the first time I saw Halle Berry is in Jungle Fever, she plays Samuel L. Jackson's girlfriend in that movie. And Spike Lee's Jungle Fever comes out in 1991, and she is very memorable in a small part as a junkie basically. And Berry is down and dirty and nasty as Samuel L. Jackson's girlfriend. That movie didn't get anything it deserved, if we're talking about Academy Awards that came movie came out in the beginning of the summer. In the middle of the summer, Boomerang happens.

Josh Gwynn: It's so nineties. It's got Eddie Murphy and he's at peak Eddie Murphy stardom.

Eddie Murphy: Didn't you just hear me say, I was sorry?

Halle Berry: I heard you say you're sorry. You're sorry and you're tired. You don't love me. You don't love Jacqueline. You only love your damn self.

Wesley Morris: And that's the movie that sort of announces her as a possible movie star. And very few people get that kind of launch pad for a kind of success. And yet, I don't know who she was losing parts to. I don't know who wasn't opening the door for her to come and audition, but it just didn't, her career didn't-

Josh Gwynn: It just didn't take off. And it's interesting, there's this interview that she did with Vogue, those My Life in Looks videos that they do where she talked about how when she was starting out, all the Black women in Hollywood were going to the same auditions because there were certain amount of parts.

Wesley Morris: There were two parts.

Josh Gwynn: Exactly. And how all of them had a very similar look.

CLIP: As an actor, I was a young actress and I was going on auditions and every audition I saw another Black girl just like me, big curly hair. And I felt like the casting director just like went "Uh, you." And then that's who got the job. So this was on purpose. It was very much designed to set myself apart from the other women that I was going up against in my auditions. And the first audition I had since I cut my hair, I got that job.

Josh Gwynn: And boom, that's how you get the iconic Halle Berry pixie. And it's part of how she started booking roles and the end of the nineties, things are really falling into place with her. She does this amazing TV movie called Introducing Dorothy Dandridge.

Wesley Morris: Oh yeah.

Josh Gwynn: Which she was destined to play because she looks exactly like Dorothy Dandridge. This is in 1999. And then she does her first superhero movie in 2000 where she plays Storm in X-Men. And she has so many different accents as one character in one movie. And I remember literally in one scene, she's like, "Logan." And then the next one, she's like, "Girl, what's up?" And I'm like, is there no continuity? I just remember around 2001 this movie called Swordfish came out. And I remember thinking, wow, like Halle Berry is a movie star, movie star.

Wesley Morris: And one of the ways you're a movie star is when you can make a movie that is a big box office success and people are going to the movie to see you. Or in unfortunately, the case of Swordfish your body.

CLIP: Featuring John Travolta, Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry, Swordfish in theaters now.

CLIP: There's a disrobing of one of the cast members I hear.

CLIP: I heard a lot about the Halle Berry.

CLIP: I like it. It was hot, sexy. I like it.

Wesley Morris: Part of the marketing of that movie, was Halle Berry will be taking her clothes off for this motion picture that also stars John Travolta in Hugh Jackman. And then you follow up your big box office success with something that shows you can also act. And so in the fall, this movie called Monster's Ball starts rolling around the festival circuit.

Josh Gwynn: And Monster's Ball is this movie about this prison guard played by blood carrier Billy Bob Thornton. And he oversees the execution of someone that's on Death Row who's played by Sean Puff Daddy, Diddy Combs. And then Billy Bob Thornton starts a relationship with Diddy's wife, Halle Berry. And I just remember it being really controversial, people not knowing how to feel about it.

Wesley Morris: The nature of people's discomfort went all over the place. It wasn't that Halle Berry was having sex at all. It was that she was having sex with a white man. It was the movies where Puffy goes to die on death row and two white men take him to die, essentially. Puffy's Dead and Billy Bob Thornton swoops in to have sex with Halle Berry.

CLIP: I feel good… Just make me feel good. Just make me feel good. I want, I want to feel good. I want to feel.

Wesley Morris: There's a lot of things for people to potentially grapple with. But I mean, she's doing what I can only describe as Blackting, right?

Josh Gwynn: What did you just say?

Wesley Morris: Blackting?

Josh Gwynn: What is Blackting?

Wesley Morris: It is the application of Blackness where none is needed. It is a style of performance that requires you to act in a way that has nothing to do with anything the page is asking for. I mean, it could be received as a kind of minstrelsy but it's not that it is something essential and true to the person doing the Blackting. And I think that the thing that might make some people uncomfortable with this performance is the degree to which the person giving it is leaving everything out there. There are no stops held in. I mean, at the end of the day, I don't love this movie, but I don't have a problem with their performance.

Josh Gwynn: I mean, certainly a lot of people like Halle's performance because she ends up getting a nomination for Best Actress at the Oscars.

CLIP: Welcome to the 74th Annual Academy Awards. What a night.

Wesley Morris: 2002 was the Blackest, the most significantly Black the Academy Awards had ever been because they gave Sidney Poitier the honorary Oscar Denzel wins for Training Day. Will Smith is also nominated that year for Ali. Whoopi Goldberg is hosting. It just is a wonderful night.

CLIP: She's an Oscar nominee tonight for Best Actress. Welcome Halle Berry.

Josh Gwynn: So because the Oscars, they take forever to get to the good part. At the end of the ceremony, they get ready to give the award for Best Actress. And of course, Halle's there, but set the scene, who else was there?

Wesley Morris: That was Sissy's Spacek in In the Bedroom, Judy Dench for Iris. Nicole Kidman from Moulin Rouge and Renee Zellweger for Bridget Jones. And the only person of those five people giving what I would call a straight up no-brainer, if you're an actor who likes the most acting in a movie, the only person doing the most acting among those five people is Halle Berry.

CLIP: What happened?

CLIP: I met your daddy.
CLIP: Listen. Listen. Just get out.

CLIP: Get your hands off me.

CLIP: You can't do at least got to give me a chance.

CLIP: Get your hands off me.

CLIP: Whatever he did.

CLIP: It doesn't matter how you do it.

CLIP: Please give me a chance to prove to you.

CLIP: Get out of here.

Wesley Morris: I mean, she leaves the snot on the floor. There's tears on windows. There's a clear degree of a person giving everything they have and people being surprised by that.

Josh Gwynn: And I think it's actually those exact same qualities that she ends up bringing to the speech. And that's what makes it so memorable. So Wesley, I think in order to do the speech justice, we got to watch it and do a true play by play.

CLIP: And the Oscar goes too, Halle Berry and Monster's Ball.

Wesley Morris: Oh, oh man, she's shaking. Oh, boy immediately.

Josh Gwynn: And she immediately, she's like "Oh my God!"

Wesley Morris: They all stand up. Everybody's on their feet. Nicole Kidman. Yeah, Judy Dench, Sissy Spacek's up. She's like already having her breakdown. Her face is in a rictus, and

Josh Gwynn: Then Halle Berry's on stage. Russell Crowe is giving her the award. So she's like hugging him, but mostly holding on for dear life.

Wesley Morris: I think Russell Crow literally probably just said to her, "Don't forget to breathe, Halle. I know it's a lot, girl. I was up here last year." I couldn't breathe. Okay, but you got to remember to breathe. He's like, "It's going to be okay.

Josh Gwynn: She cannot believe she's holding that Oscar.

Wesley Morris: She's staring at that. She's looking at it like is it real?

CLIP: Oh my God.

Wesley Morris: She is just putting her hand out in the audience. I presume it. Denzel and Pauletta Washington. I believe she is pointing to them.

CLIP: Oh my God.

Josh Gwynn: And she's crying and her face just looks beautiful and scared and excited.

CLIP: I'm sorry.

Josh Gwynn: And she starts speaking.

CLIP: This moment is so much bigger than me. This moment is for Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne, Diahann Carroll. It's for the women that stand beside me: Jada Pinkett, Angela Bassett, Vivica Fox. And it's for every nameless and faceless woman of color that now has a chance because this door tonight has been opened.

Wesley Morris: I'm tearing up.

Josh Gwynn: Me too.

Wesley Morris: I mean, nameless, faceless woman who, I mean, I think the thing that was really moving about this for me was that you want to go up there and help this person right through this. Right?

Josh Gwynn: But you're also feeling something similar.

Wesley Morris: Yes, yes, yes. It's easy to feel seen because you feel you're feeling the same thing. It's reflected back at you. Yes.

CLIP: I'm so honored. I'm so honored, and I thank the academy for choosing me to be the vessel, through which this blessing my flow. Thank you. I want to thank my manager Vincent Cirrincione. He's been with me for 12 long years, and you've fought every fought and you've loved me when I've been up. But more importantly, you've loved me when I've been down. You have been a manager, a friend, and the only father I've ever known really, and I love you very much.

Wesley Morris: Can we pause for a second? Because even in the middle of just your usual ye old award speech, pitter patter-

Josh Gwynn: The agent, the director, the producer.

Wesley Morris: She's like, thanks to you, I am standing here with this statue. I mean, I don't know. I feel like it's just such a beautiful, anyway, keep going.

Josh Gwynn: It just says so much that she's able to give the most mundane routine part of the acceptance speech still sound like heartfelt and thought out and planned and beautiful. There's this other moment in the speech I want to play still in the midst of her thanking people that I think might be my favorite part.

CLIP: Who else? I have so many people that I know I need to thank my lawyers, Neil Meyer. Thank you. Okay, wait a minute. I got to take, it's 74 years here. Okay. I got to take-

Josh Gwynn: Okay. Anytime you going to pull the race card…

Wesley Morris: She had the number. That's where I'm going to start crying because I mean, obviously it's the 74th Academy Awards, but like

Josh Gwynn: Look, she has the ability to stay present while also bringing in that historical significance. That is amazing. And speaking of history, she ends up talking about what we were talking about where her career started with Spike Lee and Jungle Fever and the people that gave her a chance when other people wouldn't.

CLIP: Lastly not least I have to thank Spike Lee for putting me in my very first film and believing in me, Oprah Winfrey for being the best role model any girl can have. Joel Silver, thank you. And thank you to Warren Beatty. Thank you so much for being my mentors and believing in me. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Wesley Morris: Oh, wow. I just feel like there is so much life in her.

Josh Gwynn: So much damn life. But that's the thing. It's like I remember feeling so happy, but now it feels in the words of a philosopher named Avril Lavigne, really complicated because I get a really different feeling watching it now than I did the night that it happened.

Wesley Morris: What's different for you?

Josh Gwynn: At that time I was so ecstatic. I was like, racism is over. Halle Berry's going to be in all the movies from now on.

Wesley Morris: Young Josh, so charming.

Josh Gwynn: Now whenever I watch it, I feel sad. On one hand, Halle broke a trend by winning this award. Best actress, no other Black woman had won it. But it's like Halle never had another Oscar nomination. She didn't really even have another Oscar contending role. And then I look at today, like 20 years later, and she's the only Black woman to have won this award. And except for Viola Davis, every Black nominee for Best Actress has only been nominated once. What the fuck? What is going on?

Wesley Morris: I also think that the real question is what is the next thing those people get to do? Because it's not a thing you would really notice if they went on

Josh Gwynn: And did a gajillion other things.

Wesley Morris: Yes.

Josh Gwynn: Right.

Wesley Morris: But that's not what happens. I mean, Angela Bassett, she was a thing for about three years, like a movie star that made things that people went to go see, and then they just stopped putting her in things. She should have had more.

Josh Gwynn: And we're putting this episode out right before the Oscars where she's nominated for Black Panther, Wakanda Forever. So fingers crossed that she finally gets her due. But of course, even if she ends up winning, it wouldn't make up for the last 30 years of Hollywood under utilizing her.

Wesley Morris: The thing about a person like Angela Bassett is you want more for this person. You want more for Gabby Sidibe, Quevenzhane Wallace, I mean, Whoopi Goldberg obviously became a star.

Josh Gwynn: But even her, they stopped calling her.

Wesley Morris: It's just a bummer to think about it that way. I mean, we liked you once and we're done. I do think that what we're talking about is just not enough opportunity for people to even vote for who they wanted to see. And I think that the thing about somebody like Gabourey Sidibe is the imagination is so limited that they can't even conceive, what could we possibly put this person in? How could we possibly use this person? Angela Bassett, what do we do with all this intensity? How do we make the most of that? Instead, they get scared and they go off in some other direction.

Josh Gwynn: And for Halle winning the Oscar didn't change things in her career and the way that anyone would've expected, like awards aside as a movie star. She hasn't been the face of too many blockbusters and big movies since.

Wesley Morris: She used all the power she had to make Catwoman, but which at the time was simultaneously the way that she was thinking. She was thinking beyond where the movies were at that moment. She could see what the landscape looked like, and imagine if that had worked right. She'd have been in a franchise that she could have done for five, six movies I mean, maybe not that many, but several movies of Catwoman. I feel like we are not sitting here having a conversation about what a bad career Halle Berry's had. Right? What we're talking about is a person who made the most of the opportunities that they both created for themselves and that industry offered them. There's this clip I want to play for you from an interview that Halle Berry did with Vanity Fair, looking back at her Oscar, and she's very sober about her impact and what could have been and what was.

CLIP: I couldn't have expected that 20 years later there would be no other women of color standing next to me. But what I also know is that I've seen women of color, especially Black women, I've seen them winning, winning, and winning since that night. I think there was a door opened within the industry, and maybe it didn't garner another award, but the doors opened, and I've seen more women of color in leading roles, producing, writing, directing now. And so I know that that moment mattered, and I know it incited change, and that part I feel good about, but sure. Do I wish someone was standing next to me? Absolutely.

Wesley Morris: She's like, well, okay. So nobody else won an Academy Award. That would've been nice, but I mean, there are so many different things happening that involve non-white women, women at all, that were not happening before 2002. They just weren't. I mean, because after she wins, you definitely see more Best Actress nominees who are not white than you've seen in the entire history of the academy before that. So she definitely opened something.

I mean, listen, I'm not about to name a name, but there's a lot of people doing a lot less, ain't doing nothing. And Halle Berry couldn't be doing more, given how long she's been in the business. Anytime you ask her to talk about this stuff, she will talk and name names. And we don't even know the things that she has been subjected to, the things that have been said to her, the things she knows she didn't get to do, because she is a Black woman. At this point Halle Berry is a mentor. She is a steward, she is a tastemaker. In some ways, I think that she is rooting for the thing that we are rooting for. I think there's a whole other act in her that we have. I mean, how old is she? 55, maybe? There's a lot of juice left in that lemon.

Josh Gwynn: So last question to play us out in honor of Halle Berry, give me your Oscar speech.

Wesley Morris: Oh, no.

Josh Gwynn: Come on.

Wesley Morris: Listen, I want to the Academy for being dumb enough to put me on the ballot. Thank you. I appreciate that. I want to thank my mom, who, oh my God, I might start crying. I want to thank my mom who couldn't be here tonight because she's no longer with us, but she's here somewhere watching this. She knows I did my best. I want to thank my sister. I want to thank you for standing by me. Let me sleep in your guest bedroom when I come home. I want to thank your babies, and I want to say that I understand everything it took to get up here tonight. And it was not easy. And I too, like Halle Berry am standing on the shoulders of a lot of people who y'all don't even know, didn't want to know, didn't want to see, made fun of, exploited, took from, didn't give back. Well, you given this to me. I appreciate it. But y'all got more work to do. Thank you, and good night. I really appreciate this, but keep the work up. We all got to do it, especially y'all.

ENDING CREDITS: 
Back Issue is produced by Pineapple Street Studios. I'm the host and senior producer Josh Gwynn. Back issue was created by myself and Tracy Clayton. Our producers are Janelle Anderson, Xandra Ellin and Ari Saperstein. Our editors are Leila Day and Emmanuel Hapsis. Our managing producer is Bria Mariette. Our executive producer is Leila Day, and our intern is Noah Camuso. Today's episode was produced by Ari Saperstein and edited by Leila Day. 

Our sound engineers include Sharon Bardales, Davy Sumner, Jason Richards, Jade Brooks, Marina Paiz, Pedro Alvira, and Raj Makhija. Art, designed by Cadence 13 in original music by Raj Makhija and Don Will. Executive producers for Pineapple Street Studios are Jenna Weiss-Berman and Max Linsky. 

I'm on Twitter and Instagram @RegardingJosh. You can follow the show on Instagram @backissuepodcast. And if you use the hashtag #backissuepodcast to talk about it on Twitter, you sound like you like chaos, and I like you. You can subscribe to this podcast wherever free podcasts are sold, you can leave a review. Tell your friend, tell your family, tell your enemy, tell everyone, because it really, really does help. I'll see you next week.