After a year off, the U.S.-Ireland Alliance’s 16th Oscar Wilde Awards returns on March 24, moving to the Ebell of Los Angeles from its longtime home of Bad Robot studios in Santa Monica.
The awards celebrate contributions in entertainment notably from creatives who are Irish (and some who are not). This year’s honorees are Adam McKay, Kenneth Branagh, Jamie Dornan and Dónall Ó Héalai.
“The whole purpose of the event is really to build ties between the industry in Northern Ireland, Ireland and the U.S. And so we built it around honoring talent that have some connection to Ireland,” Trina Vargo, founder and president of the U.S.-Ireland Alliance, told Variety.
J.J. Abrams will be back as the night’s emcee, while Andrew Garfield is a presenter. Guests include Katie McGrath, Reinaldo Marcus Green and Fig O’Reilly. Loah & Bantum and True Tides will perform as musical guests.
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Ó Héalai, who stars in “Arracht,” “Foscadh” and the upcoming “North Sea Connection,” will receive this year’s Wilde Card Award presented to up-and-coming talent.
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“I’m beyond grateful to be this year’s Wilde Card for the Oscar Wilde Awards — and to be named alongside the talent that is Jamie Dornan, Adam McKay and Kenneth Branagh,” Ó Héalai told Variety. “We’re at a very exciting point in the Irish screening industry. There’s probably more diverse stories being told now more than ever, and I guess my own recognition [of that] is on the back of two Irish-language films [‘Arracht’ and ‘Foscadh’]. … A lot of that, I’d say, is down to the support of Screen Ireland — who have been hugely proactive in getting the industry up and running.”
Over the years, the U.S.-Ireland Alliance has honored a long line of prominent creatives — including Ruth Negga, Mark Hamill, Glenn Close and Northern Irish-Scottish rock band Snow Patrol. For this year, Vargo highlighted the Irish connections and recent cinematic contributions from each of the four, newest Oscar Wilde Award honorees.
Vargo notes that McKay has both Irish ancestry as well as a house in Ireland where he went “to write the script for ‘Don’t Look Up,’” adding that the filmmaker is “always brilliant about tying in important current political issues with, at the same time, humor and comedy.”
“Both Jamie and Ken have ‘Belfast’ this year,” she continues, noting the film’s powerful, semi-autobiographical focus on the Troubles in 1969. “It’s very poignant to see [Branagh’s] recollection of his time as a little boy in Northern Ireland.”
Ó Héalai’s work has also brought some crucial moments in Irish history to the world stage. “Arracht,” for example, was set during the country’s Great Famine, which started in 1845.
“It was a very visceral experience in the sense that it’s rare that you read a script [which] had you been born 170 years ago, could and may well have been your story. … Whenever you’re telling a story of your people’s history, there’s a weight that comes with that — to try and do it as best you can, to tell it as honestly as you can,” says Ó Héalai, who also says that “Arracht” was the first feature-length film about Ireland’s famine in Irish. Ireland had submitted it to the Oscar international film race.
“It’s refreshing that we’re now in a place where we’re able to — and courageous enough — to tell these stories,” Ó Héalai continues, also pointing to Academy Award-nominated “Belfast.” “It’s certainly exciting as an actor and as a creator to be in an Ireland where there’s not only a permission, but there’s an appetite to discuss and unpack our history at a collective level and through film.”
While the Oscar Wilde Awards have been held at the Bad Robot in the past, Vargo notes that the Ebell of Los Angeles was chosen this year because of the additional space that the venue can provide amid ongoing COVID-19 concerns.