31st SAG Awards were a celebration of surprises and Hollywood’s best
From unexpected wins to passionate speeches, the show added to a turbulent awards season
Timothée Chalamet won Best Actor at the SAG Awards for his performance in A Complete Unknown. (Harald Krichel/Wikimedia Commons)
The 31st Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards delivered more surprises on Sunday night as Conclave took home the award for Best Ensemble and Timothée Chalamet claimed Best Actor, adding further unpredictability to an already turbulent awards season.
Edward Berger’s Vatican-set drama Conclave triumphed at a particularly poignant moment, in light of Pope Francis’s critical condition following a respiratory crisis. The film, which delves into the election of a new pope, entered the Oscar race with serious momentum, having already secured a victory at the BAFTAs (British Academy Film Awards). The cast, including Ralph Fiennes, John Lithgow, Sergio Castellitto, and Isabella Rossellini, dedicated their win to Pope Francis.
Anora had been the season’s presumed frontrunner after dominating the Producers, Directors, and Writers Guild Awards. But with Conclave winning big at both the SAG Awards and BAFTAs, the Best Picture race is now wide open.
“Wow,” said Fiennes, standing before the audience. “I’ve not been elected to speak. I’ve been designated to speak on behalf of our conclave, our ensemble.”
Chalamet’s Best Actor win for A Complete Unknown stunned the crowd, upending expectations that The Brutalist star Adrien Brody would take home the award. Chalamet, visibly surprised, took the stage with composure.
“The truth is, this was five and a half years of my life,” Chalamet said. “I poured everything I had into playing this incomparable artist, Mr. Bob Dylan, a true American hero. It was the honour of a lifetime playing him.”
He continued, “The truth is, I’m really in pursuit of greatness. I know people don’t usually talk like that, but I want to be one of the greats.”
Beyond the night’s winners, Jane Fonda provided the ceremony’s most impassioned moment as she accepted SAG’s Life Achievement Award. The 87-year-old screen legend and activist used her speech to urge Hollywood to embrace empathy and resist political complacency.
“What we, actors, create is empathy. Our job is to understand another human being so profoundly that we can touch their souls,” Fonda said. “And make no mistake, empathy is not weak or woke. By the way, woke just means you give a damn about other people.”
Fonda also highlighted the importance of unions in protecting workers and fostering solidarity.
“I’m a big believer in unions. They have our backs. They bring us into community, and they give us power,” she said. “Community means power, and this is really important right now when workers’ power has been attacked and community is being weakened.”
In a moment of reflection, she reminded the audience of Hollywood’s resilience in the face of past political oppression.
“I made my first movie in 1958. It was the tail end of McCarthyism, when so many careers were destroyed,” Fonda said. “Today, it’s helpful to remember, though, that Hollywood resisted.”
She then challenged her peers to consider their role in today’s fraught political climate.
“Have you ever watched a documentary about a great social movement — apartheid or civil rights or Stonewall — and ask yourself, ‘Would I have been brave enough to walk the bridge?’ We don’t have to wonder anymore. We are in our documentary moment. This is it, and it’s not a rehearsal.”
Kristen Bell returned as host for the evening and opened the show with a nod to actors’ shared journeys.
“Everyone started out as a kid in ‘Somewhere, comma, Earth,’ going to bed and waking up every morning thinking, ‘It’s going to be me,’” she said, joking that Justin Timberlake owed them all a piece of royalties for his song “Mirrors.”
She then broke into a humorous version of “Do You Want to Build a Snowman?” from Frozen, altering the lyrics to fit the theme of the night.
Bell also delivered a playful callback to Forgetting Sarah Marshall, reuniting on stage with co-star Jason Segel. In a moment straight out of the film, Segel jokingly attempted to recreate a famous scene, only for Bell to quip, “It doesn’t really have the same effect with a towel over your pants.”
She later slipped back into her Gossip Girl narrator role, reading a faux insider scoop about the night’s attendees, much to the delight of Leighton Meester, who played Blair Waldorf in the hit series.
Elsewhere in the evening, Oscar favorites Demi Moore (The Substance), Zoe Saldaña (Emilia Perez), and Kieran Culkin (A Real Pain) all secured wins, further solidifying their positions heading into the Academy Awards.
Jean Smart took Best Female Actor in a Comedy Series for Hacks, while Martin Short won his first SAG award for Only Murders in the Building, which also took home the award for Ensemble in a Comedy Series.
“We never win. This is so weird,” Selena Gomez joked.
The SAG Awards, streamed live on Netflix for the second time, were not without technical hiccups, including audio issues that briefly disrupted Fonda’s speech. But despite occasional glitches, the night was a celebration of Hollywood’s best — both on screen and off.
With just a few days until the Oscars on March 2, the biggest question remains: Can Conclave and Chalamet capitalize on their momentum, or will the Academy throw yet another curveball?
