As presenter Tiffany Haddish shouted “Preach!” off-camera, Michelle Williams used her allotted Golden Globes acceptance-speech time wisely, as she always does, by getting real about a woman’s right to choose, political representation, and the need for a government to look as female as the population it represents, all while accepting this year’s award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Limited Series or TV Movie for her turn in Fosse/Verdon.
“I’m grateful for the acknowledgement of the choices I’ve made, and I’m also grateful to have lived at a moment in our society when choice exists, because as women and as girls, things can happen to our bodies that are not our choice,” Williams explained. “I tried my best to live a life of my own making, not just a series of events that happen to me, but one that I could stand back and look at as having my handwriting all over it, messy and scrawling, sometimes careful and precise, but one that I had carved with my own hand. 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 do that the scales must and will tilt towards our children,” she continued. “Now, I know my choices might look different thank 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. 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.” Concluded Williams, “Tommy and Matilda, I can’t wait to come home to you!”
