Lily Gladstone’s SAG Win Means She Could Beat Emma Stone at the Oscars

The Oscars race for Best Actress is now neck-and-neck, following Lily Gladstone’s win at the SAG Awards on Saturday evening.

Although pundits at Variety and Entertainment Weekly predicted Emma Stone would take the win, it was ultimately Gladstone who walked away with the trophy. Gladstone won for her portrayal of Mollie Burkhart in Martin Scorsese’s Best Picutre-nominated Killers of the Flower Moon.

“My friends, fellow actors, I have felt the good in what you have done, in what you do,” Gladstone began. “This has been a hard year for all of us. Those in this room and those not in this room, I’m so proud of us. Solidarity with other unions.”

Gladstone continued: “It’s truly a gift that we get to do this for a living. That’s the win, getting to be here, getting to be on set, getting to tell stories. We bring empathy into a world that so much needs it. It’s so easy to distance ourselves, it’s so easy to close off, to stop feeling. We all bravely keep feeling. That humanizes people, that brings people out of the shadows, that brings visibility.”

With her win, Gladstone becomes the fifth actress of color to win the SAG Award for best actress. If she wins the Oscar, Gladstone will become the first Indigenous woman to win Best Actress at the Academy Awards.

It’ll be a tight race heading into Oscars night on Mar. 10, seeing as the stars have each picked up their own array of awards. While Gladstone won the SAG trophy and Best Actress in a Drama at the Golden Globes, Stone won Best Actress at the Critics Choice Awards, the BAFTAs, and picked up Best Actress in a Comedy at the Golden Globes. If Stone gets the Oscar, it will be her second following her win for La La Land, but Gladstone’s first.