Michelle Williams Delivered An Emotional, Pro-Choice Speech at the Golden Globes

Michelle Williams won the 2020 Golden Globe awards in more ways than one: She took home the Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actress in a Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television for Fosse/Verdon, and she brought the house down with a powerful speech about a woman’s right to choose.

In her acceptance speech, Williams first spoke about the choices women make as actors acting in a scene. But, she added, she also wanted to talk about “the choices they make as a person. The education they pursue, the training they sought, the hours they put in.  I’m grateful for the acknowledgment of the choices I’ve made, and I’m also grateful to have lived in a moment in our society where choice exists. Because as women and as girls, things can happen to our bodies that are not our choice.”

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 could stand back and look at and recognize my handwriting all over, 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.”

After that emotional declaration, Williams brought it all home with her final, meaningful message for women around the country listening: Get out and vote, vote, vote. And maybe this time make sure you aren’t voting against yourself.

“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. Don’t forget: we are the largest voting body in this country. Let’s make it look more like us.

The audience was going wild for Williams’s speech,  but no one was cheering louder than Williams’s friend, Busy Philipps. Philipps had all of her emotions on her face, and it couldn’t be more clear how proud she was of her friend.

And of course, comedian Tiffany Haddish kept the applause going for Williams before presenting the next award. “I’m about that women’s choice, mhm!”

Boy, are we glad Williams didn’t listen to Ricky Gervais’s advice not to get political.