Andrew Garfield Dedicated His Tony Win to 'LGBTQ People Who've Fought & Died for the Right to Live'

By Rebecca Fishbein  |  June 11, 2018 | 1:30am
Entertainment

As expected, Andrew Garfield won a Tony Award on Sunday night for his excellent performance as Prior Walter in the current Broadway run of Angels in America, Tony Kushner’s famed epic about the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. In his acceptance speech, he dedicated the award to “the countless LGBTQ people who have fought and died for the right to live,” and called out last week’s Supreme Court ruling in favor of Masterpiece Cakeshop, the bakery that refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.

“At a moment in time where maybe the most important thing that we remember right now is the sanctity of the human spirit it is the profound privilege of my life to play Prior Walter in Angels in America because he represents the purest spirit of humanity, and especially that of the LGBGTQ community,” Garfield, who was awarded the Tony for best leading actor in a play, said. “I dedicate this award to the countless LGBTQ people who have fought and died to protect that spirit, to protect that message for the right to live and love as we are created to.”

After thanking the show’s cast and production crew, Garfield added, “We are all sacred and we all belong, so let’s just bake a cake for everyone who wants a cake to be baked!” It was a clear reference to the Masterpiece Cakeshop decision, in which the court ruled 7 to 2 that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission had violated the Free Exercise Clause of the Constitution for ruling in favor of David Mullins and Charlie Craig, whose cake the bakery refused to create.

Here’s the whole speech:

Nathan Lane, who plays Roy Cohn in Angels, also won a Tony (for best featured actor in a play) for his performance. He teared up while thanking his husband and longtime partner, Devlin Elliott, and also thanked Kushner for writing “one of the greatest plays of the 20th century.”

“It is still speaking to us as powerfully as ever in the midst of political insanity,” Lane said. Indeed.

 
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