If you watched the Oscars last night, you know that it was pretty predictable up until the final ten minutes, when everything went WILD. The producers of La La Land were in the midst of their acceptance speeches for Best Picture when they realized that presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway had been given the wrong envelope, and Moonlight was the real (and deserved!) winner.
But even before that moment, there were some highlights in the long, boring ceremony. Here are the things you should actually care about from the Oscars:
1. Celebrities repped the ACLU and Planned Parenthood on the red carpet.
Twitter/ACLU, @ACLU
Celebs showed their political affiliations by wearing ACLU ribbons or Planned Parenthood pins with their gowns. Repping the ACLU were Ruth Negga, Lin-Manuel Miranda and his mom, Barry Jenkins, Karlie Kloss, and Busy Phillips. Dakota Johnson wore a Planned Parenthood pin, and Emma Stone did double duty by wearing a Planned Parenthood pin on the Oscars red carpet and an ACLU ribbon at the Vanity Fair Oscars Party.
2. “Hidden Fences” appeared on the red carpet YET AGAIN
Twitter/Roxane Gay, @rgay
At the Golden Globes, white interviewers and presenters kept combining the names of two films with majority black casts, Fences and Hidden Figures, to make Hidden Fences. Well, it happened on the Oscars red carpet, too, thanks to People’s Jess Cagle. Cagle did catch himself immediately and correct it, but still.
3. Mahershala Ali won Best Supporting Actor
Everyone’s celebrity crush Mahershala Ali won a well-deserved Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Moonlight. In doing so, he became the first Muslim actor to EVER win an Oscar, and the fifth black actor to win Best Supporting Actor. Ali welcomed his first child just a few days before the Oscars, so he is having THE BEST WEEK.
4. Katherine Johnson made an appearance onstage.
Katherine Johnson — the physicist and mathematician who is portrayed by Taraji P. Henson in Hidden Figures — joined Henson and her co-stars Janelle Monae and Octavia Spencer to present the Oscar for Best Documentary. Johnson is now 98 years old, and after her accomplishments were overlooked for so much of her life, she is finally been getting the glory she deserves.
5. Auli’i Cravalho proved she’s a real-life Disney heroine
16-year-old Auli’i Cravalho is the voice of Moana in the Disney movie, and she killed her performance onstage (with a bonus appearance from everyone’s fav, Lin-Manuel Miranda) — even when she got bopped in the head with a flagpole. Auli’i charmed us all with her performance, plus on the red carpet she had the perfect answer to an interviewer who asked her about her “Cinderella year” — “I’m having a Moana year!”
6. Viola Davis FINALLY won an Oscar
Viola Davis won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Fences — the first Oscar of her career! She’s been nominated twice before. This makes Viola the first black actor to win an Oscar, Tony, and Emmy (somebody get her a spoken word recording so she can win a Grammy and achieve EGOT status!). Also, HER SPEECH.
7. Asghar Farhadi misses the ceremony because of Trump’s Muslim ban
Iranian director Asghar Farhadi won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film for his movie The Salesman, but could not make it to the ceremony because of Trump’s Muslim travel ban. Iranian engineer Anousheh Ansari accepted on Farhadi’s behalf and read a statement condemning Trump’s ban. In part, it read: “My absence is out of respect for the people of my country and those of other six nations whom have been disrespected by the inhumane law that bans entry of immigrants to the U.S. Dividing the world into the us and our enemies categories creates fear. A deceitful justification for aggression and war. These wars prevent democracy and human rights in countries which have themselves been victims of aggression.”
8. Gael Garcia Bernal responds to Trump’s plan to build a wall
Gael Garcia Bernal presented the award for Best Animated Feature, and he used his time onstage to condemn Trump’s wall and his immigration policies: ‘As a Mexican, as a Latin-American, as a migrant worker, as a human being, I’m against any form of wall that separates us.”
9. Casey Affleck won Best Actor, UGH
Twitter/Tyler Struble, @tyler_struble
Casey Affleck won Best Actor despite the allegations of sexual assault that have followed him. Many noticed how Brie Larson — who won Best Actress for her portrayal of a rape survivor in Room — seemed to react in disappointment, handed Affleck the award without hugging him, and didn’t clap. It’s a sad reminder how little the Academy — and Hollywood, and the United States, and society at large — care about violence against women.
10. Mel Gibson’s “redemption” continues.
Twitter/NARAL, @NARAL
Mel Gibson is another alleged abuser who Hollywood has welcomed back with open arms — he pleaded no contest to battering his ex, who said that he hit her so hard he caused a concussion and knocked her teeth out. Gibson also has a history of sexist, racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic (including Holocaust denial) speech. Yet red carpet interviewers and host Jimmy Kimmel treated him with affection.
11. Moonlight wins Best Picture.
In quite possibly the most bizarre Oscars moment EVER, La La Land was announced as the Best Picture and then, mid-speech, had to take it back because the real winner was Moonlight! With this win, Moonlight became the first film with an all-black cast to win the Best Picture Oscar, and the first film portraying gay main characters to win the Best Picture Oscar (Brokeback Mountain was nominated but lost to Crash). Other Moonlight firsts: Mahershala Ali is the first Muslim actor to win an Oscar, Barry Jenkins is the first black director to nab the big three nominations (Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay), and co-editor Joi McMillion is the first black woman to earn a nomination for achievement in film editing. Director Barry Jenkins also had an amazing speech while accepting the Best Adapted Screenplay, saying in part: ‘All you people out there who feel like there’s no mirror for you, that your life is not reflected, the Academy has your back, the ACLU has your back, we have your back and for the next four years we will not leave you alone, we will not forget you.’
More from BUST
We Need To Talk About Casey Affleck’s Sexual Assault Allegations
We Need To Talk About Mel Gibson’s Domestic Violence Allegations
Finally, The Oscars Aren’t #SoWhite — But Casey Affleck And Mel Gibson Need To Go
