It was a big night for diversity at the Screen Actors Guild Awards with people from ethnic minorities winning all four individual film categories for the first time.
Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7 won best ensemble cast in a motion picture, making history for Netflix.
Two other films to pick up awards for the streaming service were Da 5 Bloods and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.
The 27th SAG film awards were held on Sunday as a virtual event.
There was no red carpet to welcome nominees in Los Angeles this year because of the coronavirus pandemic. Instead the awards were pre-recorded via video conference and squeezed into a one-hour broadcast.
The Trial of The Chicago 7 retells the story of the notorious courtroom drama involving a largely unrelated assortment of political activists who were collectively accused of inciting a riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
The film stars Mark Rylance, Eddie Redmayne, Frank Langella, Sacha Baron Cohen, Michael Keaton, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jeremy Strong, Yahya Abdul-Mateen, John Carroll Lynch and Alex Sharp.
Chadwick Boseman, who died of cancer in August last year at the age of 43, won best male actor for his performance as a Blues musician in the 1920s drama Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, a film adapted from a cycle of plays by the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, August Wilson.
Boseman’s final performance was honoured at Sunday’s SAG awards, with his widow Taylor Simone Ledward delivering a moving speech as she accepted his posthumous prize.
“If you see the world unbalanced, be a crusader that pushes heavily on the seesaw of the mind,” she said, quoting her late husband.
Viola Davis, who played the singer Ma Rainey in the film, won the award for best female actor in a leading role. Accepting the prize, she thanked “the beautiful Chadwick Boseman” and “August, for leaving a legacy to actors of colour that we can relish for the rest of our life”.
British actors Daniel Kaluuya and Anya Taylor-Joy also picked up prizes.
The SAG awards are seen as a key indicator of which films and stars may come out on top at the Oscars, which will be presented later this month.
The winners in full
- Cast in a motion picture – The Trial Of The Chicago 7
- Male actor in a leading role – Chadwick Boseman, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
- Female actor in a leading role – Viola Davis, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
- Male actor in a supporting role – Daniel Kaluuya, Judas And The Black Messiah
- Female actor in a supporting role – Youn Yuh-jung, Minari
- Ensemble in a drama series – The Crown
- Ensemble in a comedy series – Schitt’s Creek
- Male actor in a drama series – Jason Bateman, Ozark
- Female actor in a drama series – Gillian Anderson, The Crown
- Male actor in a comedy series – Jason Sudeikis, Ted Lasso
- Female actor in a comedy series – Catherine O’Hara, Schitt’s Creek
- Male actor in a television movie or miniseries – Mark Ruffalo, I Know This Much Is True
- Female actor in a television movie or miniseries – Anya Taylor-Joy, The Queen’s Gambit
- Stunt ensemble in a motion picture – Wonder Woman 1984
- Stunt ensemble in a comedy or drama series – The Mandalorian
