Black Panther took home the biggest honor of the night at the 2019 Screen Actors Guild Awards, winning Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture.
Chadwick Boseman delivered an impassioned acceptance speech on behalf of the ensemble — many of whom were gathered around him, including co-stars Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Michael B. Jordan and Angela Bassett. After shouting out director Ryan Coogler for his genius and thanking SAG-AFTRA and Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige, Boseman spoke on the significance of Black Panther and its lasting impact.
“When I think of the work every day, and the passion and the intelligence, the resolve, the discipline that everybody showed, I also think of two questions that we all had received over the course of multiple publicity runs,” he said.
“One is, did we know that this movie was going to receive this kind of response? Meaning, was it going to make a billion dollars and still be around this awards season? The second question is, has it changed the industry? Has it actually changed the way this industry works, how it sees us?
“My answer to that is to be young, gifted, and black,” he continued. “Because all of us up here, we know… to be young, gifted and black, we all know what it’s like to be told that there is not a place for you to be featured, yet you are young, gifted and black. We know what it’s like to be told that there’s not a screen for you to be featured on, a stage for you to be featured on. We know what it’s like to be the tail and not the head. We know what it’s like to be beneath and not above. And that is what we went to work with every day: because we knew not that we would be around during awards season or that [Black Panther] would make a billion dollars, but we knew that we had something special that we wanted to give the world.”
Black Panther also won in the Outstanding Performance by a Stunt Ensemble in a Motion Picture category.