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Ariana DeBose, Anne Hathaway, Issa Rae, Sydney Sweeney, Sigourney Weaver, Olivia Wilde and Michelle Yeoh were honored at Elle’s Women in Hollywood celebration on Monday, along with a starry lineup of presenters and attendees.
The event, held at The Getty Center and coinciding with the magazine’s eight honoree covers, was hosted by Nick Kroll, with opening statements from Elle editor-in-chief Nina Garcia. (Zoe Kravitz was also among the honorees but was not in attendance).
Mindy Kaling kicked off the awards presentation with a speech for her Oceans 8 co-star Hathaway, calling her “one of my favorite actresses, and actually, one of America’s favorite actresses — probably because the sheer magnitude of the talent forces everyone to take stories about women seriously. Anne Hathaway won an Oscar for playing Fantine in Les Mis, but honestly, I would have given her an Oscar for Devil Wears Prada.”
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Hathaway used her time at the mic to reflect on the criticism she received during that Les Mis era, noting, “Ten years ago, I was given an opportunity to look at the language of hatred from a new perspective. For context, this was a language I had employed with myself since I was 7. And when your self-inflicted pain is suddenly somehow amplified back at you at, say, the full volume of the internet, it’s a thing. When it happened to me, I realized that this wasn’t it. This wasn’t the spot.”
“When what happened happened, I realized I had no desire to have anything to do with this line of energy, on any level,” she continued. “I would no longer create art from this place. I would no longer hold space for it, live in fear of it, nor speak its language for any reason — to anyone, including myself.”
Keke Palmer presented Rae with her honor, declaring, “I know how there’s this old saying that you should never meet your heroes, but in this case, you really, really should,” while Rae compared women forgetting the pain of childbirth to being a woman in Hollywood.
“Forgetting the anxiety, the disrespect, the objectification, the scrutiny, the sexism, the racism, the excessive exclamations, the mansplaining, the double standards, the limitations, the undermining, the doubting, the pitting against, the dumbing down, the gaslighting and so much of the other fucked up shit we forget about solely to persist and prosper and do it all again,” Rae said of the challenges of working in the industry.
Kristen Bell stopped by to present to Weaver, whom she co-starred with in You Again, as the Alien star used her platform to share a political message.
“This fall, we have a lot to accomplish in our country. Doors that we broke down 50 years ago have been slammed in our faces, endangering families and hurting women all over this country,” Weaver said. “It is unacceptable. But we have an amazing opportunity in the next few weeks in these elections.”
“You know, a long time ago, I played someone who kicked ass and tried to save the world. In fact, I played her about 400 times, that’s just a rough estimate. And because I have this special unique experience, I know that if one woman can stop the apocalypse, think of what all of us can do,” she continued. “Think about what the women of Kansas did — defeating that abortion ban by a whopping 59 percent. It’s been really infuriating and difficult for women in this country, but I know that if we stay together, we will pass the ERA. And we will pass laws that absolutely guarantee our rights for all time.”
Comedian and Don’t Worry Darling actress Kate Berlant presented to Wilde, who in her speech joked, “Let’s face it, you’re not a woman in Hollywood until you’ve begged to be placed into a medically induced coma until your press tour is finished. Until then, you are just a woman residing in or around the Hollywood area.”
“Sometimes it’s tempting to excuse ourselves from the burning hellfire of the misogyny that defines this business and say ‘Goodnight, good luck, I’d rather eat glass for a living,’” Wilde said, but added that women in the entertainment industry don’t let each other give up, and she’d recently gotten encouragement from other Hollywood ladies in “the form of a tight grip of your shoulders and a tense stare into your eyes and a defiant, ‘Do not let them fuck with you.’ And it’s always really tempting to reply, ‘Well, if I didn’t know things were bad before, I do now.’” Though she did confirm, “I love my life; I love my job; what more could I ask for?”
Kerry Washington presented to DeBose, as she remembered meeting her on the set of The Prom and immediately falling in love with the star.
“As an Afro-Latina, I didn’t see a lot of me onscreen growing up, and as a queer woman I knew this moment mattered,” DeBose said, recalling her West Side Story Oscar win earlier this year. “When I won, my greatest fear was that I was a poster child for all these things, that [I’d] somehow be told, ‘Thank you for checking all those boxes for us, and now please take your Oscar and go away.’ But that didn’t happen, and for some odd reason, I’m still here, still being asked to play parts that matter, and still being invited to wildly impressive and joyous gatherings like this one.”
A Euphoria reunion was also in store, as Maude Apatow presented to Sweeney, and Sweeney read a letter to her younger self from the stage.
“I’m still learning today, and I’m going to be still learning tomorrow. And that’s OK, because no one has it all figured out,” she read. “And you’re going to be asked who you want to be when you grow up, and I really hope you’re proud of who we are now.”
For the final award of the night, Charlize Theron presented to Yeoh, noting in her intro “if there’s a justice in the world, she may just land her first Oscar nomination” this year for Everything Everywhere All at Once and joking, “she is also currently joining Pete Davidson in the next Transformers movie, which is great, but Michelle, please don’t date him. It’s a trap.”
In reference to that Oscar buzz, which Hathaway also mentioned in her speech, Yeoh said it was something “I waited 40 years to hear. Maybe dreams do come true. We will see. Miracles can happen.”
“There are many of us having the best times of our career well beyond our ‘prime years,'” she also noted, “which is why it still feels like a dream to be standing here with all of you. Yet here I am, which is perhaps a sign that things are, in fact, changing.”
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