Diversity dominates 2016 SAG Awards amid Oscars race row controversy

The SAG Awards have been a reliable bellwether for the Oscars, with individual SAG winners for film roles over the last three years corresponding exactly with Oscar winners a month later. While accepting the award for outstanding performance by an ensemble in comedy, Orange Is the New Black actor Laura Prepon looked around at her dozen or so costars onstage-all of whom play fellow inmates at the fictional Litchfield women’s prison-and marveled at their differences.

In contrast to Oscars, where people of colour were not even nominated, SAG awards offered a diversity and saw actors like Idris Elba, Viola Davis, Queen Latifah and Uzo Aduba win the titles. These are two reasons the results of the SAG Awards are viewed as being a better and more accurately diverse representation of the true value and excellence of acting work in both the movies and televisions.

OITNB also won for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series with one of the most diverse cast on television right now.

The Screen Actors Guild awards were handed out on Saturday, continuing to add to the suspense of the current Oscar race. – Queen Latifah, victor for her role in Bessie, on what she’d tell the next USA president.

The newspaper drama Spotlight won the best picture prize. Jada Pinkett-Smith, whose husband is 2016 Golden Globe nominee Will Smith, was the first to stand up against the Oscars for the absence of non-whites in the four acting categories. – Alicia Vikander, supporting actress victor for The Danish Girl.

Discussing backstage how cinema can match the diversity seen on television, she said: “The public has to continue to demand that, we are in a capitalist society so hopefully supply and demand will kick in”.

“Change is inevitable, so might as well wrap your mind around it and, let’s go”, she said.

Vikander thanked the “trans community” in her tearful acceptance speech, while Tambor dedicated his award to the transgender people who don’t have the wealth and privileges of his character, “for their operations, for their medicines, for their freedom”.

“We have become a society of trending topics”, said Davis.

Kevin Spacey brought Netflix its other award for his role as Frank Underwood in “House of Cards“, for which he has also won a Golden Globe. She’s 0-3 with SAG Award noms to date.