Meryl Streep plays drastically against type as a terrible performer in the period film “Florence Foster Jenkins,” but unlike the title character the actress has been racking up plaudits. She earned a record 20th Oscar nomination, won the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the Golden Globes, and most recently she was given the National Ally for Equality Award from the Human Rights Campaign. Watch her acceptance speech above, where she once again addressed Donald Trump.
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“Yes, I am the most overrated, over-decorated and currently, I am the most over-berated actress … of my generation,” said Streep, referencing Trump’s tweet in response to Streep’s Golden Globes speech in which she slammed Trump for mocking disabled reporter Serge Kovaleski. But Streep felt her notoriety obligated her to speak out. “If we live through this precarious moment, if his catastrophic instinct to retaliate doesn’t lead us to nuclear winter, we will have much to thank our current leader for. He will have woken us up to how fragile freedom is.”
At this past weekend’s HRC fundraising gala, the LGBT advocacy group also awarded the Oscar nominated film “Moonlight” with the Visionary Arts Award (watch here). Said co-star Jharrel Jerome, “I identify as straight, but in other ways I struggled to fit in for most of my life … I always felt disconnected, but after I read Barry and Tarrell’s script that feeling disappeared. I didn’t feel alone.”
“I’ve always considered myself an ally to LGBTQ causes,” added director Barry Jenkins. “I think with this honor hopefully we can share that experience with even more people because now more than ever I think our stories need to be told.” Added co-writer Tarell Alvin McCraney, “There are limits. They exist. Some we are born with, and some we are given. ‘Moonlight’ … is also the story of how with the aid of others, sometimes the kindness of strangers, we can see our way towards limitless.”
Trump would have hated it.
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