Michael B. Jordan just won his first Oscar for best actor and thanked Warner Brothers studio for honoring “original ideas” in Hollywood.
Jordan should perhaps receive two statuettes for his double role as Smoke and Stack in this year’s “Sinners,” a favorite at the box office and in the Academy.
The film has already won four awards tonight, and was a front-runner for best picture. It ended up losing out to “One Battle After Another.”
Jordan got a standing ovation as he took the stage, and he began his speech by shouting out his mom as well as his dad, who he said flew in from Ghana to see him win an Academy Award.
He thanked Warner Brothers studio and co-CEOs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy “for believing in this, this dream, this vision of Ryan Coogler’s and betting on the culture and betting on original ideas and original artistry.”
“I’m so honored to call you a collaborator and a friend,” Jordan said of Coogler, a frequent collaborator. He also thanked Coogler for giving “me an opportunity and space for me to be seen. I love you too, bro.”
Jordan beat out Timothée Chalamet for “Marty Supreme,” Leonardo DiCaprio for “One Battle After Another,” Ethan Hawke for “Blue Moon” and Wagner Moura for “The Secret Agent.”
The competition was neck and neck. Jordan, Chalamet, Hawke and Moura all would have been first-time winners in the category.
Online prediction market Kalshi had Jordan in a strong lead as of Sunday before the show after Chalamet’s gaffe about preferred art forms sank his chances in the weeks leading up to the event.
“Sinners,” an action-thriller extravaganza, sets Jordan’s characters on two sides of a vampire apocalypse, set in Mississippi during the 1930s in the Jim Crow era. One must fight off the monsters while the other has been turned.
Jordan, in his speech, thanked the “Sinners” cast, specifically calling out Hailee Steinfeld, Delroy Lindo, Jayme Lawson and Omar Benson Miller, among others.
An early breakout role for Jordan was as a teenager in the HBO series, “The Wire,” and later, “Friday Night Lights” for two seasons. He rose to international fame with 2018’s “Black Panther” and cemented himself as a Hollywood mainstay with the movie’s sequel, “Wakanda Forever.” He also stars in the “Creed” movies.
“I stand here because of the people that came before me,” Jordan continued, calling out Black actors like Jamie Foxx, Will Smith, Sydney Portier and Halle Berry.
“To be amongst those giants, amongst those greats, amongst my ancestors, amongst my guides,” he said. “Thank you everybody in this room and everybody at home for supporting me over my career, I feel it. I know you guys want me to do well, and I want to do that because you guys bet on me. So thank you for keeping betting on me.”
