Jeffrey Wright at the 2024 Film Independent Spirit Awards.Photo:Kevin Winter/Getty
Kevin Winter/Getty
Jeffrey Wrightgave a moving acceptance speech at the2024 Film Independent Spirit Awards.
At the Santa Monica ceremony on Sunday, the actor, 58, became visibly emotional while accepting the award for best lead performance for his role as Thelonious “Monk” Ellison inAmerican Fiction.
After taking the stage, Wright acknowledged the award’s presenter, hisRustincostarColman Domingo, telling the actor, “To receive this from you, Colman, man, is just a beautiful gift.”
“It’s funny, you go to these award shows, you kind of grow tired of them. And then you get one, it kind of changes the vibe a little bit,” Wright joked.
Jeffrey Wright at the 2024 Film Independent Spirit Awards.Kevin Winter/Getty
He then recalled his very first Spirit Awards appearance — a memory that “adds to wonderful memories” of the ceremony, he said.
“The last time, or rather the first time that I was here, the Independent Spirit Awards, I had the opportunity to meet for the first time,Muhammad Ali,” he said, “who was here with his filmWhen We Were Kingsand who, of course, was an absolute hero of mine and remains so to this day."
The recipient went on to thank costarsSterling K. Brown,Tracee Ellis Ross,Erika Alexanderand John Ortiz, as well as “everyone who worked on this film,” before giving an emotional nod to his family.
“My son is here, Elijah, I love you,” he said, as the camera’s cut to his son, who had been sitting beside him all evening.
“You and your sister and my family are the sun around which I orbit. I am nowhere without you,” he added as Elijah became visibly emotional.
Jeffrey Wright in ‘American Fiction.'.Claire Folger
Claire Folger
Finally, Wright thankedAmerican Fictionscreenwriter Cord Jefferson — who won the Spirit Award for best screenplay earlier in the evening — and Percival Everett, the author ofErasure, which the screenplay was adapted from.
“Percival Everett wrote a beautiful story of a family and of a man facing personal challenges and cultural challenges, some of which are as old as our country,” Wright said. “You only need to look to the news out of what passes as our political sphere to understand that this work continues.”
“But Cord, what you did, at the very least, was to give us opportunity to laugh at the goddamn utter ignorant absurdity of it all and I thank you for that and thank you all,” he finished.
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American Fictionfollows Monk (Wright), a Black author frustrated that his books don’t sell well while books filled with racial stereotypes do.
He decides to write a novel under a pen name that parodies the books he sees garnering attention and when it becomes a huge success, finds himself caught up in a web of lies that may have dire consequences.
source: people.com
