The SAG Awards are one of the most important acting awards in Hollywood and come right after the Oscar or Emmy for many stars. Because they are chosen here by their peers. All actors active in Hollywood decide here who are the best in their field. But there’s one thing I love above all as an action fan.
Because not only the big stars win prizes here. It’s not just Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr. who win for “Oppenheimer”, Elizabeth Debicki for “The Crown” or Jeremy Allen White and Ayo Edebiri for “The Bear: King Of The Kitchen” like this year. It is the only major Hollywood award that also honors those people without whom great action films and series would be unthinkable: the stunt ensembles.
Many filmmakers have been calling for Oscars for this for a long time. Although it is still a long time coming, the SAG Awards are actually showing the way. But they weren’t really celebrated there in 2024 either. The prices for “Mission: Impossible 7: Dead Reckoning“ in the cinema sector and “The last of us“ in the series field were completely lost. Sorry Netflix – unfortunately that was very messed up in my opinion.
Netflix takes over the SAG Awards…
The streaming service has had the rights to broadcast the SAG Awards since last year. However, in 2023 you could not yet stream it on your own platform. The company’s own technology was not yet advanced enough to achieve stable live streaming on Netflix itself. The show was only available on YouTube. This year it became a streaming event on Netflix for the first time – but one thing didn’t change.
As part of the so-called pre-show, journalist Elaine Welteroth and “Queer Eye” star Tan France conducted the usual interviews with the stars. Who designed their wardrobe, which other star are they especially looking forward to meeting, and so on… The familiar banter. In the middle of these numerous interviews, Taylor Zakhar Perez, known for “The Kissing Booth 2” and especially “Royal Blue”, stands at halftime of the pre-show at Elaine Welteroth’s house and holds two envelopes in his hand.
…and continues to hide the stunt prizes in the red carpet chatter
In about a minute and a half, the nominees in the stunt categories are briefly listed, the envelopes are opened and the winners are announced. A quick “Congratulations” afterwards and then straight on with the rest of the red carpet show. No one gets an award, no one gets applause and no one gets to give a speech of thanks. After that, no photos of winners with their prizes will be sent around the world. No one on the show notices anything. Somewhere at home, a few stunt people were probably cheering on the couch in front of the TV. The prices were simply dutiful and, from my point of view, quite embarrassing. It’s actually quite a shameful spectacle to see two prizes simply pushed aside.
That is not new. In the past, the stunt prizes were awarded in such a simple way. But This year everything could have been different. TV broadcasters argued that the show should not be too long and that there were also commercial breaks (in which “unimportant” extra prizes had already been moved at awards in the past). But Netflix doesn’t have that problem. There are no commercial breaks, no follow-up program that can’t be postponed.
In 2023 I was still able to gain some understanding. Netflix picked up the show on short notice. There were the technical issues that prevented streaming on your own platform and the stopgap, YouTube. Maybe you haven’t given much thought to what could be improved. But now they had a year to prepare; these were really the first real Netflix SAG Awards. And yet the stunt ensembles continue to hide in shame, are told to stay home and look forward to the brief reading of the title of their film or series between interviews – as if they don’t actually want to be there.
Why is there no outrage at the SAG Awards like there is at the Oscars?
When the Oscars decided to shift several awards to TV commercial breaks a few years ago, there was an outcry on social media and also in Hollywood. “Gladiator” star Russell Crowe called the idea “fundamentally stupid.” Why isn’t there as much fuss at the SAG Awards? During the Oscars commercial break, the winners were appropriately celebrated, at least in the audience.
Not only as an action fan, I hope that something changes at the SAG Awards in the future. Especially when streaming on Netflix, it should be possible to find five to ten minutes of time, to give delegates from the stunt teams a brief opportunity to receive an award, enjoy the applause and say a few words of thanks. It does not have to be the entire stunt team (sometimes consisting of 50+ people) that is brought forward.
I’m sure many action fans would be as excited about this as many fans of the series were excited about the cast of “Breaking Bad” or “Modern Family” reuniting on stage to present awards for best ensemble to their successors in the categories drama (“Succession”) and comedy (“The Bear”). So Netflix: please change it by 2025 and stop leaving out shoddy awards. You can leave them out immediately…