Jessica Chastain brought the HIV activist from Tammy Faye's 1985 interview to Oscars luncheon

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Jessica Chastain continued Tammy Faye's legacy of championing LGBTQIA+ rights through to Monday's Oscars luncheon.

The Eyes of Tammy Faye biopic star (and current Best Actress frontrunner) attended the Academy's annual event honoring its 2022 class of nominees with Reverend Steve Pieters as her date. Pieters famously appeared as an interview subject on the Tammy's House Party talk show in 1985, when the televangelist showed compassion as she discussed Pieters' life as an openly gay man living with HIV at a time when homophobic sentiment was on the rise during the AIDS crisis.

Pieters, who was portrayed in the film by actor Randy Havens, documented the day on his Instagram account, where he shared photos of himself posing alongside stars of Oscar-nominated movies like The Lost Daughter, Being the Ricardos, Parallel Mothers, and more. He also shared a candid snapshot of Chastain talking with her Eyes of Tammy Faye costar Andrew Garfield, who portrayed the namesake's controversial husband, Jim Bakker, in the project before scoring his own 2022 Oscar nomination for his work in Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical Tick, Tick... Boom!

Chastain, a producer on the Michael Showalter-directed film, wanted to include a scene that recreated Pieters' landmark interview with Tammy Faye in the project to combat historical notions that often dismiss the late personality's real-life contributions to social causes in favor of shallow commentary on her colorful looks.

"I believe that Tammy and Steve Pieters saved lives that day, through that interview," Chastain previously told EW's The Awardist of the scene. "I felt ashamed that this woman hadn't been acknowledged for that, and instead had been criticized for how she decided to present herself in terms of her mascara."

In a September 2021 conversation with RuPaul's Drag Race star Ginger Minj — who also famously donned Tammy Faye drag on the Emmy-winning reality series — Chastain further praised the film's subject for championing LGBTQIA+ community rights at a time when it was considered controversial to do so.

"Not only did she say we as moms and dads need to love through anything and that's the way of Jesus, she's telling everyone watching her on TV, 'If your children are different from you, you put your arms around them and you love them,'" Chastain explained to Ginger of the 1985 interview. "She also said if someone is struggling with AIDS, we wrap our arms around them and we tell them that we care. That was a radical thing to do, especially [amid] the likes of Jerry Falwell, who had so much power, saying the exact opposite at the time."

The Eyes of Tammy Faye is now available to buy or rent on digital platforms and Blu-Ray, in addition to streaming on HBO Max.

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