The Blackest queerest Academy Awards ever
Even before the official show started, there was Colman Domingo, resplendent as usual, smiling and posing with his husband, Raúl, on the red carpet. After an opening medley of songs from various musical iterations of 'The Wizard of Oz' with Ariana Grande, her 'Wicked' costar and fellow Oscar nominee,
Something has changed within me
Something is not the same
I'm through with playing by
The rules of someone else's game
Sitting in the front row, Erivo attended the ceremony with her girlfriend, Lena Waithe, an award-winning writer, director, and producer.
Perhaps the best thing is that none of this was a big deal. Except that it was.
Advertisement
Since I didn't watch the show, I found out about these events in the news and on social media the following day. I wish I could have experienced the awe of watching it in real time.
I inherited my parents' vast love of the movies and, as a child, I would sneak out of bed to watch the Oscars. But as much as I loved the show, I was also aware that too few people on that stage looked like me.
Never could that queer kid have imagined such a celebration of Black queer excellence before the eyes of the world. I'm buoyed by the fact that hopefully no child seeking their reflection in a society that deifies whiteness and heterosexuality will ever have to look as hard or as long as I did to find it.
But I don't want to overlook the serendipitous timing of the show. This unabashed display of queer Black people unfolded as the Musk/Trump administration continues its wholesale erasure of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in the federal government — and seemingly anywhere else where they find people of color, women, and the LGBTQ community.
The talent, the range, and especially the jubilation on that stage was a sharp rebuke to the extremes of an administration fueled by a nauseating brew of malice, white supremacy, and white male fragility. Though it clings to everything it touches, no one at the awards needed to call out its hate by name. The inspiring presence of Erivo, Domingo, Tazewell — and the stony road each probably took to deliver them to that night — was the kind of resistance that said more than words ever could.
Advertisement
Joy is an act of defiance and a thing of beauty. And that wondrous display of Black queerness at the Academy Awards must thrive in our own lives as a bulwark against these days of midnight. We will not be erased. We have always been. And we will always be rising and defying gravity.
This is an excerpt from
, a Globe Opinion newsletter from columnist Renée Graham.
.
Renée Graham is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
17 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Billy Williams, Oscar-winning British cinematographer whose credits included Gandhi and Women in Love
Billy Williams, who has died aged 95, was one of the leading British cinematographers across four decades, winning an Oscar for his work on Richard Attenborough's Gandhi (1982). Exactly a year earlier he had missed out by a hair's breadth on scooping an Academy Award for the autumnal geriatric drama On Golden Pond (1981), starring Henry and Jane Fonda and Katharine Hepburn. But in April 1983 Williams received the gold statuette – shared with Ronnie Taylor – as one of the eight Oscars garnered by that epic film. It was the culmination of a long and often painful collaboration that for Williams had begun three years earlier when, in a short telegram reply to Attenborough's request for him to join the creative team on Gandhi, he wrote: 'Dear Dickie. Yes. Love Billy.' Williams enjoyed telling the a story of informing Katharine Hepburn that 'Richard Attenborough would like me to shoot Gandhi for him,' to which the actress replied: 'I think he's already dead, Billy.' The production, which was shot over six months, was fraught with logistical problems during filming in India – from the endless dust which unless swiftly checked would form like cement on the camera equipment, to problems obtaining official permission to shoot inside various key government buildings. Then, six weeks into filming, Williams slipped a disc and had to fly back to the UK. With his blessing, his duties were handed over to Ronnie Taylor, who had worked as a camera operator on two of Attenborough's earlier films. Taylor filmed for a month before Williams returned – only to suffer another slipped disc a month later, replaced once more by Taylor. By the time the production returned for its final weeks in the UK, Williams had recovered and completed the film, which included shooting in Staines Town Hall, doubling for the court house in Ahmedabad where Gandhi's 'Great Trial' had taken place in 1922, and at the Institute of Directors building in Pall Mall for a key interior sequence begun months earlier on the long steps leading up to the old Viceroy's House (now the presidential palace) in New Delhi. Williams had earned his first Oscar nomination a decade earlier for an altogether more intimate drama, Ken Russell's Women in Love (1970), featuring the much talked-about nude wrestling scene between Alan Bates and Oliver Reed. 'Photographically, it was the best opportunity I've ever had in terms of what the script was offering,' Williams recalled. 'It had every kind of challenge. Apart from the usual day and night interiors and exteriors, there was candlelight, snow scenes, dusk and dawn, and that nude wrestling scene. Bates and Reed agreed to be fully nude for one day only, on a closed set. After that they'd only do waist-upwards scenes.' Billy Williams was born on June 3 1929 in Walthamstow, east London. His father, also Billy, was one of Britain's great pioneering cameramen, who shot the surrender of the German Fleet at Scapa Flow, covered the trailblazing Cape Town-to-Cairo truck expedition, and was the first man to film from the summit of Mt Kilimanjaro. When young Billy left school at 14 he was offered a choice of jobs: working in a city brokerage for one of his mother's in-laws, or as an assistant to his father. There was no contest. After working some years for Billy Snr, he broke away and joined British Transport Films, before moving into commercials when all attempts at graduating to features failed. Working on ads with successful film directors like John Schlesinger, Ken Russell and Ted Kotcheff paid off when Williams managed to make it into long-form drama with Russell on the spy thriller The Billion Dollar Brain (1967), the second sequel to The Ipcress File, then on Women in Love. The Schlesinger connection also paid dividends handsomely in 1971 with Sunday Bloody Sunday, a daring – for its day – and intimate drama of homosexual love, which earned Williams one of his four Bafta nominations. Williams continued to shoot films, including the award-winning Western, The Eagle's Wing (1979) and Dreamchild (1985). He retired after Driftwood (1997). During and after his career as a cinematographer, he taught cinematography at workshops in the US, Germany, Ireland and Hungary, and in the UK at the National Film & Television School in Beaconsfield. One of his regular teaching colleagues was another great cinematographer, the Hungarian-American Vilmos Zsigmond. When Zsigmond declared himself unavailable to shoot On Golden Pond, co-starring Henry Fonda, Jane Fonda and Katharine Hepburn, he paved the way for Williams to notch up one of his most memorable international credits. 'Around that time,' he recalled, 'Vilmos was very much into flashing the film to soften the image, and using various filters to take the contrast away. The director Mark Rydell was very keen I should do something like that, too. I wasn't, though, because I didn't like the idea of the film looking too chocolate-boxy, too soft and sentimental. I thought the actors [Henry Fonda was 76 playing 80, Hepburn 72] should look their age.' Eventually, he managed to persuade Rydell to do away with filters altogether, apart from a 'very fine black net on the extreme close-ups of Hepburn and Jane Fonda'. Henry Fonda and Hepburn went on to win Academy Awards for their performances, in Fonda's case posthumously. Williams's other notable contributions to cinema history included shooting the atmospheric 11-minute opening sequence in Iraq for The Exorcist (1973). Tall and distinguished-looking, he was perhaps unique among cinematographers in appearing front-of-camera in major Hollywood movies – first, as a British vice-consul shot down by Sean Connery's North African Berber tribesmen in John Milius's period adventure The Wind and the Lion (1975), and then as an expert witness in Suspect (1987), Peter Yates's courtroom thriller starring Cher and Liam Neeson. He served as president of the British Society of Cinematographers from 1977 to 1979 and was appointed OBE in 2009. Billy Williams and his wife Anne had four daughters. Billy Williams, born June 3 1929, died May 20 2025 Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
San Francisco Chronicle
an hour ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
How this S.F. company's $100 million gamble made ‘Lilo & Stitch' one of Disney's biggest hits
There's an old Hollywood adage, attributed to comedian W.C. Fields, that advises filmmakers and actors never to work with children or animals. Good thing the makers of the new live-action ' Lilo & Stitch ' didn't listen to such nonsense. In the less than two weeks since its release, the Disney film is one of the most beloved of the year, pulling in more than $600 million at the global box office. It is already the second-biggest Hollywood release of 2025, and has a good shot at supplanting ' A Minecraft Movie ' ($947 million) as the top earner. Obviously, one of the reasons it has become one of Disney's most successful live-action remakes is audiences' warm memories of the 2002 animated film. But a major factor is the undeniable chemistry between 6-year-old Maia Kealoha, who plays Lilo, and the beautifully realized 2025 version of Stitich, the tiny irrepressible alien who lands in Hawaii and becomes Lilo's chaotic companion. The secret to developing that relationship was spearheaded by Industrial Light & Magic, based at the Presidio in San Francisco. As the visual effects team was grappling with how to turn the 2D animated version into a fully fleshed-out CGI character, a crucial decision was made: to aid the-yet-to-be-cast child actress who would play Lilo, the $100 million production would use animatronic puppets to interact with her and serve as a visual guide for the VFX team. 'They immediately had a bond,' animation supervisor Matthew Shumway said during a recent Chronicle visit to ILM. 'Every day there would be cute moments on the set. It was really important to let (Maia) have a friend on set. It was really cute to see how black (Stitich's) nose was by the end of production; it was pretty rubbed off because she kissed it so much.' Shumway, who filmed test footage with his own 6-year-old daughter before Maia was cast, and visual effects supervisor Craig Hammack turned to Legacy Effects, a Los Angeles company that specializes in animatronic puppets (Grogu of ' The Mandalorian '), to create a series of Stitch puppets, including one suited for underwater scenes. Hayes called the child's performance 'huge.' 'A 6-year-old girl, a lot on her shoulders, and there's only one of her, you know?' Hayes said. 'She nailed the character, and she was very professional, and very impressive.' Hammack, a two-time Oscar nominee as visual effects supervisor on ' Deepwater Horizon ' (2017) and ' Black Panther: Wakanda Forever ' (2022), agreed. 'Maia was phenomenal — very honest, very focused,' he said. 'It didn't feel like (the production) was being tailored to a child in that everything was able to stay on track and very productive for the time we had with her.' Because Lilo first thinks Stitch is a dog, some of the character's movements were dog-like. In those scenes, a French Bulldog named Dale stood in for Stitch in scenes with Maia. The animal 'always gave a little bit of unpredictability,' Hammack noted, which added spontaneity to the film. Somewhere, the ghost of Fields was spinning. Blending live actors with animated characters has been a thing since at least 'Anchors Aweigh,' the 1945 MGM musical in which Gene Kelly famously danced with Jerry the Mouse. The landmark 1988 film 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit' upped the ante. But counterintuitively, because of ILM's cutting-edge technology, 'Lilo & Stitch' was able to deliver something Kelly didn't have: a physical scene partner. 'Our work works because Seth did his job,' Shumway said. 'Without it, we would maybe get a stale performance from Maia. By the time it gets to (the VFX team), we digitally remove (the puppet), but then we've got all the other elements that benefited from the work that he did. Because Maya gave a really good performance, then we can give a really good performance with Stitch. 'So really, it's an old school process, but it's still very modern in how we approach it.'
Boston Globe
2 hours ago
- Boston Globe
Publisher and podcaster Zibby Owens will help you decide what to read this summer
Owens also runs an eponymous publishing company; owns Zibby's Book Shop in Santa Monica, Calif.; and hosts literary salons and retreats around the country, including around Boston. She's also a writer and editor herself ('On Being Jewish Now,' an anthology featuring Jewish writers reflecting on identity; 'Bookends,' a memoir centering around the death of her best friend on Sept. 11). Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up She's been candid about her connectedness — Owens grew up in Manhattan; her dad is businessman Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of the Blackstone Group — but she's also really vulnerable about the universal struggles that level us, from divorce with four little kids to self-image issues to identity crises, and she amplifies a variety of voices on her platforms. We chatted about rejection, self-discovery, and summer reads. Advertisement Sign up for Parenting Unfiltered. Globe staff #mc_embed_signup{background:#fff; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; } /* Add your own Mailchimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block. We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */ Subscribe * indicates required E-mail * You went to business school at Harvard. What took you down this road? Books have been the throughline of my own story forever. I fell in love with reading with 'Charlotte's Web.' I started to cry and was forever hooked on reading as the way to think and feel and cry and laugh. You probably know this from your sons, and I know from my kids: You can develop a love of reading, but some people are just born readers. I was just one of those born book lovers. I had my first miniature book published when I was 9 by my grandparents. One of the essays was 'Finders Keepers, Losers Weepers,' about a set of twins in a haunted house. Another was how the doughnut got its hole in the style of Rudyard Kipling. They did a limited print run of 20 books and gave it to me on my 10th birthday. I thought that was the coolest thing ever. I eagerly handed out my books to my teacher and all these people I cared about. I had an essay published in Seventeen magazine that I wrote when I was 14 about how I felt in the wake of my parents' divorce and how I had gained a bunch of weight over the course of one year. I interned at Vanity Fair, and I realized after a day that there was no path from editorial to quickly becoming an author. I realized professionally that there was no easy path to being an author. Advertisement I went to business school, and two weeks after I got there, my best friend died on 9/11. She had been my college roommate, and it changed my point of view on basically everything. I realized that 'life is short' is not just something people say. Literally, she was here one minute; gone the next. I was unpacking all her clothes and [thought], I might as well do the things that I want to do in life before it's too late. After business school, I took a year off to freelance full time and write a book full time, a fictionalized version of what happened with her and me. I got an agent. It ended up not selling. My dreams of being the youngest published author in the world had faded by then. It wasn't until I got divorced — fast forward, I'd ended up having four kids — I suddenly had all this time, every other weekend. I started writing a bunch of essays. The essays led me to want to try to publish a book again, because I honestly was so humiliated by my other book not selling that I didn't try to write fiction for over a decade. You know, I write about families, parenting, and how hard it is to find community. It's very easy to feel like we're out there alone, doom-scrolling at 11 o'clock before we fall asleep. Using books, you've been a conduit for creating community with 'Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books,' which I know is now 'Totally Booked.' What do you hope that people get from these podcasts? Moms like me were so busy. We'd talk about books, but a lot of people didn't have time to read them. We didn't want to feel like we were totally missing out. I used to rip magazine articles out and share them with friends before Facebook. Advertisement I wanted to give women like me a free pass. You can be a non-reading reader and still maintain that piece of your identity. I feel like so much identity can be stripped away when you're a parent, especially with young kids. By interviewing the people who wrote the books, I felt like I was at least giving people a way to stay in touch with that piece of themselves. It was with a sense of humor, a wink, and a nod. Obviously, it was not going to be The New Yorker podcast. It was supposed to be the way you would talk to a friend, which is sort of how I do most things in life, whether it's a social media post or the tone of an anthology I'm curating, or my own memoir. It's authentic and close. I feel like people who are attracted to that end up being similar in some ways: They're nice people who want to connect and want to laugh at the craziness of life. Part of the name change is: My kids are a little older now, I don't feel like I'm that frantic young mom that I was, and so many people were deterred from listening because of the 'moms' label. I didn't want that to happen anymore, especially because I don't talk about parenting books, per se. Zibby Owens. James Higgins ©2025 What's the author criteria for your podcast? Most of the books are contemporary fiction, memoir, or nonfiction designed to help me see the world or myself a little more clearly. I don't do science fiction. I want to read books that help me live my life better. Advertisement In this cultural moment, which is fraught in so many different ways, what's your sense of who's buying and consuming books right now? This is not exclusively, but older women and young women — people who, I think, are really trying to find their place in the world: young women who are coming of age; out with their friends and not quite settled, and then women who maybe are empty nesters and feel a little bit unsettled — those life stages when you have a little bit more time and more willingness to be led. I feel like those two groups of women read the most and certainly shop the most often. A lot of the men who come into the store are looking for information on something like education or nonfiction. Women are looking more for escape and connection. As a writer, it's tough not to be hard on yourself. I remember hosting an event in Boston with famous authors and thinking, 'They're so much younger or more successful than me!' How do you put that in perspective, when you're interviewing people who are wildly successful authors? That's such a fun question. When I was writing, before 'Bookends,' I just kept pitching, and I would get a rejection and close out of email and sit down with another author who was a mega-bestseller with tears still on my eyelashes. I thought: Maybe this is not going to happen for me. I have to live with that. We all get choices about what to do with our limited time here. I started to realize that maybe the value I bring to the world is not in the books that I write. Maybe there are other things that I'm called to do. I try to justify it that way. If I were only writing full-time books, I would get more done. But I'm not only writing full-time books. I'm doing a million things that I also love, and so are you. Everything is a tradeoff. Advertisement This is just the way I was made. I'm not made to be a novelist, only sitting at my desk in a fictitious world all day. I love doing that, but I can't do that exclusively. What are you reading? I'm doing a series of live shows right now, so I'm prepping for all of those. I'm finishing Jeanine Cummins's book 'Speak to Me of Home' [about three generations of women connected by their Puerto Rican heritage]. And also 'Greenwich' by Kate Broad, which is quite delicious, although I have to say: I'm probably 70 pages in and I'm like, 'Who dies? Somebody is supposed to die! Who is it going to be? We still don't know!' I'm also prepping [to feature] 'What My Father and I Don't Talk About,' the anthology from Michele Filgate [about the complexity of the writers' relationships with their fathers]. I know you don't talk exclusively to moms, but we're a big part of your audience. How do you hope people feel after listening to your podcast or going into your bookstore? I hope that I help them navigate the world a little more easily and with a sense of humor. They're not alone in anything they're going through, no matter how isolated they might feel. All they have to do is open the next book, and they realize that. Anytime they feel that sense of loneliness or isolation or overwhelm or 'less than,' they can read and immediately feel better, or they can listen to a podcast and glean something about the human experience that maybe they would have missed. Interview was edited for clarity. Kara Baskin can be reached at
