Jordan Peele made history Sunday night. At the 2018 Oscars, the writer-director won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for Get Out, his first-ever feature film, making him the first black writer in 90 years of the Academy Awards to win the award.
In his acceptance speech for the groundbreaking win, Jordan kicked things off by pointing out how hard it was to write the script for Get Out. “This means so much to me. I stopped writing this movie about 20 times because I thought it was impossible,” he said. “I thought it wasn’t gonna work. I thought no one would ever make this movie, but I kept coming back to it because I knew if someone let me make this movie that people would hear it and people would see it.”
After dedicating the award to “all the people who raised my voice and let me make this movie” — which included his wife, Chelsea Peretti, Universal Pictures, Blumhouse Productions, and the entire cast and crew of Get Out — Jordan gave a special shout-out to his mom, “who taught me to love even in the face of hate.” “And to everybody who went and saw this movie, everybody who bought a ticket, who told somebody to buy a ticket, thank you!” he said, as the audience erupted in cheers and applause. “I love you for shouting out at the theatre, shouting out at the screen; let’s keep going!”
He followed up his tear-jerking speech with a more characteristically hilarious tweet. “I just won an Oscar. WTF?!?” he tweeted.
I just won an Oscar. WTF?!?
— Jordan Peele (@JordanPeele) March 5, 2018
And backstage, Variety reports, Jordan continued to talk about the importance of representation like his Oscar win. “I almost never became a director,” he said. “There was such a shortage of role models. I’m so proud to be a part of a time at the beginning of a movement where I feel like the best films in every genre are being brought to me by my fellow black directors.” Hear, hear.
Jordan wasn’t the only one making the case for representation at the 2018 Oscars. In fact, “representation matters” was kind of the unofficial theme of the Academy Awards. Frances McDormand celebrated all of her fellow nominees in her acceptance speech for Best Actress, ending it with a call for contract clauses called “inclusion riders” that guarantee diverse casts and crews. Rachel Shenton, who accepted the Best Live Action Short Film award for her short film, The Silent Child, did her best to sing along in British Sign Language in honour of the 6-year-old star of the film, which is about a deaf child. And Gael García Bernal, Miguel, and Natalia LaFourcade’s performance of “Remember Me” from Coco was a major moment of representation for Latinx and Mexican audiences everywhere.
