Televised awards shows are a difficult thing to put together for sure. They are live broadcasts where you can’t control a lot of factors, meaning that they can easily run long, which never makes TV networks happy. Also, there’s the fear that people might start slapping each other on stage. This is what leads to the inevitable moment where a show tries to cut an awards acceptance speech short to keep things moving along. The winners have different reactions when this happen, but last night at the Golden Globes Michelle Yeoh may have found the best response ever, just telling the show itself to shut up.
Last night Michelle Yeoh took home the best Actress award at the Golden Globes for her role in Everything Everywhere All At Once. She was giving a truly wonderful speech, when the orchestra does that thing they have to do here, they start playing music as a cue that the winner needs to wrap up their speech. Instead of doing that Yeoh, very politely, told them to shut up and threatened to beat them up. Everything Everywhere All At Once studio A23 posted the moment to Twitter.
“Shut up please.” Golden Globe WINNER Michelle Yeoh 🏆 pic.twitter.com/VwoicHTonjJanuary 11, 2023
And let’s be honest. Nobody doubts for a second that Michelle Yeoh actually could beat them up, right? I doubt any of the players are trained fighters. Even if they took her on all at once I still think she could take them. And now, I just created an action scene I need to see in a future Michelle Yeoh movie.
People react to being played off in all sorts of ways. Most try to speak quickly to get in everything they want to say as fast as possible. Some people just ignore the music and continue like it’s not there. Sometimes, when a speech is particularly good, you’ll even get the audience shouting down the music because they want it to continue.
The best part of this is how polite she is. She says “please” and never raises her voice, but she’s also quite clear that she’s being serious, and has things she wants to say. And the speeches are a big part of the reason we tune in to shows like the Golden Globes. We want to see who wins, we might have a favorite film we’re rooting for, but in the end it’s about giving the winners their moment to say thank you, and they should be given every opportunity to do that.
We should get ready for a lot more battles between award winners and orchestras over the coming weeks. More awards shows are on the way, including the Oscars, a show that regularly runs long, sometimes very long. But for those of us that actually want to hear what people like Michelle Yeoh have to say, that’s ok.