Ariana DeBose Is The First Queer SAG Award Winner

After delivering a compelling performance as Anita in West Side Story that she said “took 10 years to make,” the actress and dancer Ariana DeBose was honored by her acting peers last night by winning a Screen Actor’s Guild for her supporting performance.

With this win, which is one of many nominations DeBose has collected for the role, she became the first openly queer woman of color to win this award in the show’s history. DeBose, and Kristen Stewart who was nominated for Spencer, are also the first openly queer actors to be nominated for an Oscar in over 20 years. Shockingly, the last gay Oscar nominee before this year was Ian McKellen for his role as Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings.

Despite going through plenty of progress in rights and representation for LGBT people, there seems to still be some strange cultural disconnects with casting and awarding queer actors for their work. In the years since The Lord of the Rings came out and in plenty of examples beforehand, there has been a litany of straight and cisgender actors that received huge acclaim and awards laurels for their depictions of LGBT characters. Just in recent years, Jared Leto won an Academy Award for playing an HIV-positive trans woman, and Mahershala Ali got his second Oscar for playing the gay pianist Don Shirley in Green Book.

DeBose delivered an inspiring speech when she took the stage at the SAG Awards last night. “It’s taken a long time for me to feel comfortable calling myself an actor,” Debose opened her speech saying. “I really do believe that when you recognize one of us, you recognize all of us, in a way.” When asked in the SAG press room about her historic achievement, DeBose made sure to focus on the fact that more winners who look like her will come after her.

“Whatever firsts are attached to my name, they are immensely special to me,” she said. “But I’m focused on the fact that if I’m the first of anything that means I won’t be the last.”