At Sunday’s Golden Globes, Teyana Taylor took the first trophy of the night, a supporting actress prize for her work in “One Battle After Another.”
But Taylor also scored another win that may prove just as significant this awards season: She delivered the show’s most compelling acceptance speech, the sort of moment that could endear her to Oscar voters eager to see her recreate it on their own stage.
Taylor was emotional, but not so overwhelmed that she couldn’t open with a joke about her diamond-encrusted thong. She left room for spontaneity but was still smart enough to prepare a speech ahead of time. And as she went from teary-eyed to formidably locked in, the speech became a two-minute showcase for her craft, allowing us to watch a gifted actress summon fortitude from thin air.
By the time she dedicated her win to “the little brown girls watching tonight,” it was clear she had made the most of her time. There’s an art to making a good acceptance speech: When done well, it can produce one of the most iconic moments of a star’s career; a fumbled opportunity can follow you forever. Here are four things nominees should keep in mind in case they’re lucky enough to be summoned to the stage.
Find your career’s emotional arc
Though Demi Moore ultimately lost last year’s best actress Oscar to the “Anora” star Mikey Madison, the veteran actress spent a month and a half as the presumed front-runner based largely on the strength of a galvanizing speech she made after triumphing at the Golden Globes.
“I’ve been doing this a long time, like over 45 years, and this is the first time I’ve ever won anything as an actor,” Moore said, immediately setting up the stakes of the moment. She compared herself to the character she played in “The Substance,” who is condescended to and discounted as she ages. And as Moore held her trophy aloft in rebuttal to that perception, she framed her win as a reminder that “I do belong.”
Maybe it helped that she had recently written a memoir, but Moore distilled her life story so effectively that she could probably offer pointers to presidential candidates. At the very least, future awards-season contenders should learn from her ability to find and articulate the emotional through line of her career. Tell us what brought you to that stage and we’ll be eager to share the moment with you.
Make the names meaningful
At a recent awards-show after-party, a winner confessed to one major regret: He had planned to read a list of thank-yous but got caught up in the emotion and forgot to pull it from his pocket.
I doubt the audience minded his mistake. Few things sap an acceptance speech’s momentum like a litany of names, and while an actor may feel indebted to his agent, his assistant, his lawyer and his lawyer’s assistant, viewers have no earthly idea who those people are. Though the Oscars introduced a backstage “thank-you cam” to limit those lists, little has changed.
If a winner still feels compelled to pull out a list in the meager time allotted, all I ask is that those names be given some context. Did your agent’s assistant save your script from the slush pile? Did your stylist avert a wardrobe malfunction on the red carpet? Even a few well-chosen words can help a list of names go from impenetrable to involving, so make the effort to draw us in.
If you sweep the season, don’t overstuff
Paul Thomas Anderson has been nominated for 11 Oscars and never won, so with his film “One Battle After Another” sweeping the top prizes at every big show this season, you might expect years’ worth of pent-up acceptance-speech material to come bursting out of him.
Instead, Anderson is pacing himself. The Globes gave him two major moments in the spotlight when he won the director and screenplay prizes, and I was impressed by how judicious he was with each speech. One was dedicated to his late assistant director, Adam Somner, and the Warner Bros. executive Mike De Luca, while the other named three very different artists who helped inspire his screenplay. At no point did he launch into a laundry list of endless thank-yous, and perhaps that’s the luxury of being the season-long front-runner: There’s no need to overstuff.
With several shows ahead where he’s still considered the favorite, Anderson knows there will be ample time to give the most meaningful people in his life (like his partner, Maya Rudolph) their own special shout-outs. Previous sweepers like Kieran Culkin, Robert Downey Jr. and Brad Pitt all made equally good use of their pole position, varying very funny speeches with the confidence of people who knew they’d be back. After all, sweepers have no excuse for unfurling a long list of names on Oscar night when they’ve had an entire season to get those personal tributes tucked away.
Plan an exit route
If you’re determined to wing it, at least know when to end things.
Last year, Adrien Brody set the record for the longest Oscar acceptance speech after winning for his role in “The Brutalist,” and though he began with a promising riff about how quickly success can vanish, he kept restating that same idea to diminishing returns. As the orchestra tried to play him off four minutes later, Brody insisted he was about to wrap things up, only to continue for nearly two minutes more until that jilted orchestra came back in.
“OK, I’ll get out of here,” he said, appearing to relent. Instead, he kept talking.
It’s possible that Brody practiced that speech beforehand, but he badly needed both a stopwatch and an exit line. The speech had no arc and no offramp, and it was murmured in the same hushed, self-serious tone from start to finish. A strong wrap-up gives the speechmaker a place to build to, and audiences are far more willing to forgive a filibuster when it ends with a zinger or an emotional last line. If we’re rooting for the orchestra, that win just became a loss.
Kyle Buchanan is a pop culture reporter and also serves as The Projectionist, the awards season columnist for The Times.
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