Michelle Williams Powerfully Champions 'a Woman's Right to Choose' in Golden Globes Speech
Michelle Williams has taken home the 2020 Golden Globe award for Fosse/Verdon months after picking up an Emmy for the same performance — and just as she did at the Emmys, she made a powerful speech about amplifying women’s voices.
The 39-year-old actress won the award for best actress in a miniseries or TV film for playing real-life Broadway legend Gwen Verdon.
Williams used her time onstage while accepting the award to applaud a woman’s right to choose and to urge women to “vote in [their] own self-interest.”
The actress said that she is grateful to have had freedom of choice, which enabled her to have the life and career she does today.
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“I’ve tried my very best to live a life of my own making and not just a series of events that happened to me, but one that I can stand back and look at and recognize my handwriting all over,” she said. “Sometimes, messy and scrawling, sometimes careful and precise. But one that I had carved with my own hand, and I wouldn’t have been able to do this without employing a woman’s right to choose.”
“To choose when to have my children and with whom, when I felt supported and able to balance our lives, knowing, as all mothers know, the scales must and will tip towards our children,” the actress continued. “Now, I know my choices might look different than yours, but thank God, or whomever you pray to, that we live in a country founded on the principle that I am free to live by my faith and you are free to live by yours.”
“So, women 18 to 118, when it is time to vote, please do so in your own self-interest,” Williams said. “It’s what men have been doing for years, which is why the world looks so much like them, but don’t forget we are the largest voting body in this country. Let’s make it look more like us.”
Backstage, Williams elaborated a bit more on her emotional speech.
“I have been by nature, a shy person, but I’m about to turn 40 and I realized that over a great span of time I’ve become more strong and I’ve become more able and I’ve found my voice and I want to be able to use it. I also feel like at this age and where I am in my life, I have so much to give and it would be negligent of me to not try from this position to hand back everything that was handed over to me,” she said. “Somehow I managed to put it all into a minute and a half. There’s so much to say but everything I wanted to say tonight … from what I remember, I got out on the stage.”
Williams played Verdon to Sam Rockwell‘s Bob Fosse, and the win marks her second Golden Globe award. She last won in 2012 for My Week with Marilyn. Williams also has four Oscar nominations under her belt.
The actress made headlines earlier this week when a source confirmed to PEOPLE she is expecting her second child, her first with fiancé and Hamilton director Thomas Kail.
Williams’ daughter with the late Heath Ledger, Matilda, 14, played matchmaker, the source said. The actress and Kail, 42, were photographed together in London where she is busy filming Venom 2. Williams was spotted buying baby clothes at Seraphine’s maternity boutique in Kensington.
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The actress shared Matilda with the late actor Heath Ledger.
Kail directed Williams in the drama Fosse/Verdon, for which she won the Emmy Award for lead actress. The director is close friends with Lin-Manuel Miranda and directed his musical In the Heights on Broadway. He also won an Emmy for directing Grease: Live.
The 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards ceremony is airing live on NBC from the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles on Sunday, Jan. 5.
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