"I don't know where to begin, because I never expected this," said Jordan during his acceptance speech. He also stated how honoured he was to have just been nominated.
Jordan's co-star Delroy Lindo expressed at the ensemble win about the experience of creating "Sinners". "We put everything we had into every single moment of each day." Lindo thanked the other actors for supporting their work together.
The SAG Awards are awarded by peers and are an important measurement of support from within the industry. The SAG presents a pivotal shift in awards' season, coming right after the BAFTA; therefore, it is a decisive landmark in the movement of the unpredictability of the best actor award.Both Lindo and Jordan have received a lot of credit for how well they handled themselves. During an awards ceremony, there was an incident where the name of John Davidson (a well-known activist) had an unwelcome outburst of a racial comment while the two actors were on stage.
After the incident, Lindo gave a speech at the NAACP Image Awards where he said how much support they received and how much help it was for changing "something that might have been a very bad thing" into a good thing.
Jordan also thanked his mother, Donna, in his speech; how she was so supportive of him when he was trying to become an actor. "Mom," he stated, "thanks for taking me to New York and back all those times." He went on to talk about Ryan Coogler (the film's director) and to all the other people who had a part in the film and how much help they gave him to do his best work possible.
Winners outside of Sinners
The film, One Battle After Another, won Sean Penn the best supporting actor award and continued to create a presence for the film in award ceremonies. Jessie Buckley (an actress from Ireland) added another Best Actress award to her amazing run with Hamnet, for a film based on the book by Maggie O'Farrell.
There was an unexpected winner when Amy Madigan won Best Supporting Actress for her role in the film Weapons. The win also updates her place in the awards race after having problems in previous award shows such as the Golden Globes and the Baftas.
The television categories produced some very emotional moments. Catherine O'Hara, who died in 2022, received a posthumous award for her role in The Studio, and her show also won for Best Comedy Ensemble and Best Comedy Actor for Seth Rogen. Rogen thanked those who had reached out to him to present the awards on behalf of O'Hara; and he, as the creator of the show, mentioned her as a generous and brilliant person.
Later in the night, Harrison Ford won a Lifetime Achievement Award, but jokingly said it was "early for me" with his six decades of acting, which have included Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Blade Runner.
Will Sinners go all the way?
With 16 Academy Awards (Oscar) nominations (and that may be the record for most nominations for one film), Sinners looks to be a strong contender for Best Picture. Sinners is a film set in the 1930s in Mississippi and follows identical twins (played by Jordan) that have a plan to start a music venue but are stopped by a supernatural being.
However, Sinners does have some tough opponents such as One Battle After Another, which has won many awards prior to the Oscar ceremony. Jordan winning the Best Actor award has put him back in the running for Best Actor against some of the precursors (or those actors who won Best Actor leading up to the Oscars) such as Timothée Chalamet, Wagner Moura, and Robert Aramayo. Even with all of the categories identified in this year's Oscar race where the winners are fairly obvious, Jordan's Best Actor award makes the Best Actor race one of the closest races overall.
As the awards season begins to wind down, Sinners has successfully re-established itself as a major player in the race for the Oscars.
