At Sunday night’s Screen Actors Guild Awards, actors celebrating actors and politics took center stage, with celebrities using their influence to talk about the current administration holding power. Early on the broadcast, Julia Louis-Dreyfus commented on the executive order that barred immigrants from seven countries from entering the United States. And, later on in the ceremony, David Harbour, who plays Chief Jim Hopper on Stranger Things also spoke about politics while the show was accepting the award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series.
Harbour’s speech started out typical of all the speeches made at the show, where he thanked Netflix, the show’s creators and talked about the amazing cast that he was a part of. But the tone soon changed, as he said that acting should be a “call to arms.”
“We are united that we are all human beings and we are all together on this horrible, painful, joyous, exciting and mysterious ride that is being alive,” Harbour said at one point in his speech. “Now, as we act in the continuing narrative of Stranger Things, we 1983 Midwesterners will repel bullies, we will shelter freaks and outcasts, those who have no homes. We will get past the lies. We will hunt monsters. And when we are at a loss amidst hypocrisy and the casual violence of certain individuals and institutions, we will, as per Chief Jim Hopper, ‘punch some people in the face’ when they seek to destroy the weak and the disenfranchised and the marginalized. We will do it all with soul, with heart, with joy.”
During the last part of his speech, the entire audience was on their feet cheering, similar to Meryl Streep’s speech at the Golden Globes a few weeks ago.