Barry Jenkins Recalls Being Called A Racial Slur During ‘Moonlight’ Awards Season

One of the most interesting Academy Awards moments of all time is when “La La Land” was wrongfully announced as the Best Picture winner back in 2017. Luckily, it was rectified and “Moonlight” was announced as the rightful winner of the award, but the confusion on stage quickly went viral and the rest is history. That award capped off an incredible awards season run for Barry Jenkin’s film. But little did viewers know at the time that the, despite the critical acclaim and high profile, he was dealing with the same issues plaguing Black people around the world.

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After the world premiere of his latest film, “If Beale Street Could Talk” at the Toronto International Film Festival, Jenkins relayed a story about his time during the “Moonlight” awards season that was incredibly shocking. After explaining how his felt a scene involving racist cops in ‘Beale Street’ showed a direct correlation to today’s society, despite being set in 1973, the filmmaker further gave proof by telling a story.

Jenkins talked about going to an annual Academy-sponsored event before the Oscars, where he was fully decked out in a nice tuxedo and was one of the more buzzed-about filmmakers for his work on “Moonlight.” From that awards banquet, he was going to another party, when something shocking happened.

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He explained (via Vulture):

“So I’m at this party and I was trying to get to my homeboy Justin Simien’s after-party for his show ‘Dear White People.’ My driver, he had a hard time getting in and out of the valet, because if you pull up and your person’s not there, you’ve got to drive out and circle around. I come out and the valet person is just like, shocked. I’m like, ‘What’s up?’ He’s goes, ‘Oh, you shouldn’t get in the car with that dude.’ I’m like, ‘Why?’ He goes, ‘Oh, because when I was out here before, he looked all agitated, and I said to him, ‘What’s wrong?’ He goes, ‘Oh, you know, nothing, I’m just sitting around here waiting around to pick up this nigger.’ And then he smiled and said, ‘Oh, and he’s probably going to get nominated for Best Director.’’ Subtext: But he’s still just a nigger.”

Jenkins goes on to explain that if this sort of situation can happen to a critically-acclaimed director in a $5,000 suit, then it’s obviously happening to those Black people working blue-collar jobs or just going about their business.

Judging by the reception ‘Beale Street’ is receiving at TIFF, it sounds like the filmmaker might be doing the awards circuit again. It’ll be interesting to see if anything has changed in the two years. We’re guessing nothing has changed.

Here’s the full transcript of the story:

During awards season for ‘Moonlight,’ I was at some big party. It was the Governor Awards for the Academy. It’s an amazing event. It’s the event you hear about the least, where they honor all of these folks. The woman who cut ‘Lawrence of Arabia,’ the editor, she received a lifetime achievement award there. It’s all these cars, everybody’s in tuxedos, and there’s an after-party at the Sunset Tower Hotel. The Sunset Tower Hotel is this hotel that it’s very hard to get in and out of. The valet line is very short. So cars come in and they go out, they come in, they go out.

So I’m at this party and I was trying to get to my homeboy Justin Simien’s after-party for his show ‘Dear White People.’ My driver, he had a hard time getting in and out of the valet, because if you pull up and your person’s not there, you’ve got to drive out and circle around. I come out and the valet person is just like, shocked. I’m like, ‘What’s up?’ He’s goes, ‘Oh, you shouldn’t get in the car with that dude.’ I’m like, ‘Why?’ He goes, ‘Oh, because when I was out here before, he looked all agitated, and I said to him, ‘What’s wrong?’ He goes, ‘Oh, you know, nothing, I’m just sitting around here waiting around to pick up this nigger.’ And then he smiled and said, ‘Oh, and he’s probably going to get nominated for Best Director.’’ Subtext: But he’s still just a nigger.

And this is when I’m wearing a $5,000 suit. I’ve just come from the Governor Awards. So if it could happen to me with someone who’s driving me, a person in power, what the hell do you think happens to some dude working a shift at the factory? Or some dude walking to the bar? So when we got to that scene I was like, This is fucking it. This is it. Everything we’ve been doing. Yes. Because I felt this at the height of my public awareness, whatever — [he] literally said, ‘This dude is probably going to be nominated for Best Director.’ And then he called me that shit right before. So if it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone and we’ve got to tell these damn stories.

Check out all our coverage from the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival here.