Zoe Saldana has won best supporting actress at the SAG awards. Credit: Flickr: Gage Skidmore
Zoe Saldana has won best supporting actress at the Screen Actors Guild awards, continuing her scoop of gongs ahead of the Academy Awards.
The 46-year-old actress played lawyer Rita Mora Castro in the film Emilia Perez. Her character takes on the defence in a murder case involving the wife of a powerful media mogul. Her performance has already earned her awards at the Golden Globes, Critics’ Choice and the BAFTAs, sparking predictions she could be on track to take an Oscar next.
“To be in this room…this is my community, this is my circus,” Saldana said. “Thank you to SAG-AFTRA.” Her win makes her the second Latina to triumph in the category after Ariana DeBose for West Side Story in 2022.
“I got my first SAG card in 1998. I didn’t even know what SAG was,” Saldana continued. “I am grateful that my mother and father and sisters looked it up and helped me educate myself to know what it means to be a part of a union that protects me so I can make a living out of this crazy industry.”
Karla Sofia controversy hasn’t damaged Saldana’s run of awards success
Her fellow nominees were Monica Barbaro (A Complete Unknown), Jamie Lee Curtis (The Last Showgirl), Danielle Deadwyler (The Piano Lesson) and Ariana Grande (Wicked). Speculation from industry commentators that the recent controversy surrounding Saldana’s Emilia Perez co-star Karla Sofia Gascon could harm her chances of a win has not proven to be the case.
Gascon has come under criticism for a series of historic racist and offensive tweets on social media platform X, made mostly between 2019 and 2024. After this came to light, Saldana said during a Q&A for Emilia Perez, “I’m still processing everything that has transpired in the last couple of days, and I’m sad. It makes me really sad because I don’t support [it], and I don’t have any tolerance for any negative rhetoric towards people of any group.”
Emilia Perez a film about “truth” and “love,” says Saldana
Speaking of the film’s story, Saldana said: “I believe that everybody has the right to be who they are, and Emilia Perez is about truth, and it is about love. And I think that us as actors, now more than ever before, we really have to tell stories that are beautiful and thought-provoking and live within the spectrum of artistic freedom.”
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