Seven years after scooping Best Actress for La La Land, Emma Stone proudly received the prestigious gong for a second time at the 96th Academy Awards, thanks to her efforts in genre-defying Poor Things.
Emma's coveted Oscars win garnered a mixed reaction. While some were piling on the praise, others couldn't help but feel that a certain Best Actress nominee was robbed. Lily Gladstone received a nod for their portrayal of Mollie Kyle in Killers of the Flower Moon but fans were left disappointed after she went home Oscar-less.
'Guess we’ll just have to keep casting Lily Gladstone in great movies with great scripts until she gets [their] moment too. I’m in if you are,' tweeted one Lily supporter. A second voiced, 'As great as Stone was, this really feels like the night’s big misfire. That’s a shame. Lily Gladstone’s work was phenomenal, a performance that will stay with me for years and years.'
Irrespective of whether you are Team Stone or Team Gladstone, Emma's acceptance speech was clearly designed to quash any sense that the women pitted against each other for best actress were rivals in any sense of the word.
'Oh boy, this is overwhelming,' she said as she tried to gain composure. 'The women on this stage, you are all incredible.'
Turning to Gladstone, she assured, 'Lily, I share this with you. I'm in awe of you and it has been such an honour to do all of this together.'
She continued, 'The other night, I was panicking – as you can kind of see, it happens a lot – that maybe something like this could happen. And [director] Yorgos [Lanthimos] said to me, "Please take yourself out of it." And he was right, because it’s not about me. It’s about a team that came together to make something greater than the sum of its parts. And that is the best part about making movies. It’s all of us together.
'I am so deeply honoured to share this with every cast member, with every crew member, with every single person who poured their love and their care and their brilliance into the making of this film.'
Wrapping up her speech, Emma shouted out her parents, brother, husband Dave McCary and their daughter Louise, even quoting Taylor Swift's Bigger Than the Whole Sky.
Addressing her husband directly, she said, 'Love you so much. And, most importantly, my daughter, who’s gonna be three in three days and has turned our lives technicolour. I love you bigger than the whole sky, my girl.'
The speech went down a storm. 'Emma Stone's heartfelt acceptance speech at the Oscars was truly inspiring, showcasing her immense talent and dedication to her craft,' tweeted one viewer.
But perhaps the most important takeaway is how the women were in each other's corners, regardless of the outcome: 'Now you see Emma Stone and Lily Gladstone supporting one another, as they have been throughout this entire awards season? That's class. That's maturity. Two women happy to acknowledge and celebrate the other. To stans of the latter, let's not act petulant.'
Millie Payne is a News and Entertainment Writer for Grazia. She has specialised in showbiz interviews, features, articles and roundups for over three years and loves combining her love for writing, talking and all things popular culture.