On Sunday, Meryl Streep accepted the Cecil B. DeMille award at the annual Golden Globes ceremony. In true Meryl fashion, she used her speech time to speak on multiculturalism, diversity, and the era of Trump.
Streep pointed out that Hollywood “is crawling with outsiders and foreigners.” She went on to list just a few of the major celebrities from diverse backgrounds:
“Who are we, and what is Hollywood, anyway? It’s just a bunch of people from a bunch of places… Sarah Jessica Parker was one of seven or right kids from Ohio, Amy Adams was born in Vicenza, Veneto, Italy, and Natalie Portman was born in Jerusalem. Where are their birth certificates? Ryan Gosling, like all the nicest people, is Canadian, and Dev Patel was born in Kenya, raised in London, and is here for playing an Indian raised in Tasmania.”
Streep also spoke about the performance of the year that “broke [her] heart”, referring (thought not by name) to Trump’s impersonation of a disabled reporter:
“It made its intended audience laugh, and show their teeth. It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter — someone he outranked in privilege, power, and the capacity to fight back. It kind of broke my heart when I saw it, and I still can’t get it out of my head, because it wasn’t in a movie. It was real life. And this instinct to humiliate when its modeled by someone on the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life, because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing. Disrespect invites disrespect. Violence incites violence. When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.”
Watch Streep’s full speech above.
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