00:00Damn, that's heavy. Whoa. Oh, man.
00:13Dear God, from the moment I decided to own the power that lives in a commitment to joy,
00:24to peace, you and I became best friends. You began to order my steps so that ease and efficiency
00:35defined my actions, and I realized that you have plans to prosper me and not to harm me.
00:44Plans to give me a hope and a future. And in this moment, as I sit in what feels like a blessing,
00:52it seems, the consequence of the actions of a younger me. So I call on you, oh God. I come to
01:01you when I pray, trusting that you will listen, take control of my life, dear God. Continue to order
01:07my steps and lead me only to where you would have me go. From this moment forward, I renew my
01:12commitment. I only ask that you cleanse my heart, refresh my spirit where it has grown weary, Lord.
01:19Steady and calm my mind. Fortify my mental attitude so that joy and peace are again my primary
01:28operational setting. Are in my spirit, on my tongue, as readily and abundantly as you have
01:35intended so that I might, from a healthy place, be and become the person you intend for me to be.
01:40Amen. Hi. Good afternoon, my brothers and my sisters. It's taken some time for me to
01:54receive or really sink into what this honor means. In fact, I'm not wholly convinced that it has even
02:02now. I don't know. But what I'd like to share with you all are three things that I know for sure.
02:10One, I do know that 25 years has been beyond sufficient time to understand that this world
02:16is overly eager to forget, ignore, to overlook, to endanger, to misuse, misunderstand, and otherwise
02:25brutalize the black woman. Yet, in that same world, essence stands and has stood proud and immovable in
02:38its goal to amplify our truths, to protect, to honor our mystique, and to celebrate our successes. So to be
02:45seen and with this, honored by essence feels like release. Love, the rich, all-encompassing, sweeping,
02:56sweet surrender type of love, the kind that you only get from a black woman. The kind of love and
03:02visibility that saves and allows us to endure the way that we always have. So from the depths of my
03:09spirit, I say thank you, essence, for amplifying my truth, honoring my mystique, and celebrating my
03:16successes. Two, I do know that my truth and my path would not be what they are were it not for my
03:28teachers, the wildly passionate individuals who share joy and purpose from a convicted place, who with
03:36intention or not, pushed me to learn myself, ask questions of the world, to have the patience required to
03:44notice when an answer comes, and to always go deeper. These are the people who in all things center
03:50compassion. This begins with my mother who decided with my birth that I'd be great, who turned stress into
04:05nothing more than a syncopated rhythm to set the hustle to, who set the bar on goal setting and execution.
04:13This black woman was bred by individuals that claim glory and compassion, excellence, and empathy as our just due.
04:22The inheritance promised by a father here on earth that made it clear I could do anything, and a father above that swore and
04:31show that he has plans to prosper us. So as I move through the processing of this gift, allow me to say thank you to my
04:42teachers, to my aunt Missy, my grandmothers Jenny, Desiree, and Mero who gave me the grit and the grace to hold court with you all today.
04:52Allow me to say thank you to my teachers, Greg Parenti, Alyssa Ciccarello, Casey McClellan, Miss Allison Tallis, and Jen Shirley.
05:00I share this moment with my teachers because for a little girl in Brooklyn, with a whole lot of frustration and not a lot of peace,
05:08with generations worth of confusion and minimal clarity, it was your clarity, it was your calm, your hope for my joy.
05:16And passion for the craft that opened my then nascent eyes to the mercy of what I was to find and the home I was to make in this field.
05:32But as I said before, I don't speak those names without challenging myself to go deeper, or in this case, higher.
05:38So I can't stand before you much longer without honoring the black men and women who I've had the privilege to learn from.
05:47Who through no coincidence, I'm sure, have played the most instrumental roles in my shaping as an artist,
05:53beginning with my very first teacher, Mr. Raphael Peacock, who from our meeting challenged me to see myself as capable of all things.
06:02Kevin Carroll, the first person to lock me in the ring with myself, to teach me to honor the experience through work.
06:11Godfrey Simmons, for inviting me back into my own hopes for my life.
06:17And to Daniel Kaluuya, whose words have a supernatural power, whose words prepared me before I knew what preparation entailed,
06:28and whose presence is the most grounding and most effortless class on excellence.
06:36In these 12 years of acting and eight years of auditioning, I've grown quite familiar with hearing no.
06:45But I've heard yes three times.
06:48And each one has reminded me of what we all know, and that's three.
06:53That the beauty of our resilience as a people was never limited to our emergence from hardship.
07:01Greatness lives in our ability to try.
07:05Barry Jenkins.
07:09Shaka King.
07:12And now, the most laudable, Ryan Coogler.
07:17I thank you for allowing me to try.
07:23Before I was your student, I was your supporter.
07:27Now, I say thank you for trusting me with the craft and championing me to go further and deeper into my own.
07:36You all have opened the door to a world that I only saw in my dreams.
07:42And now that I am here, I intend to take great care.
07:47To continue to learn it.
07:50To ask more questions of it.
07:53And to grow it as best I know how.
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