LOS ANGELES, CA — The 32nd Screen Actors Guild Awards opened Friday night with the union’s traditional cold open, in which 47 working performers stared directly into the camera one at a time and confirmed, with the gravity of a hostage proof-of-life video, that they are an actor.
The segment, which ran nine minutes and forty seconds, included three sitcom leads, a Marvel sixth-billed, two people from the British prestige show your aunt won’t shut up about, and a man best known for playing a corpse in two separate procedurals. Each one delivered the line as if breaking news.
Inside the Shrine Auditorium, the ceremony then proceeded to hand small bronze statuettes of a naked man to other naked men, in front of a room of formally dressed people who applauded as if they had not been expecting this.
“The SAG Awards are unique because they’re voted on by actors, presented to actors, and watched, statistically, by no one,” said Renata Pell, a credentialed entertainment-industry observer who runs a Substack about award shows nobody asked for. “That’s what gives them their integrity.”
Winners delivered acceptance speeches that thanked, in order: the cast (“my family”), the crew (“the real heroes”), their agent (“a warrior”), their manager (“another warrior”), their publicist (“my third warrior”), and a person identified only as “Mom, you were right.” Two winners cried. One winner cried at another winner crying.
The Best Ensemble category, traditionally the night’s biggest award, went to a streaming drama that 11 percent of Americans have heard of and 1.4 percent have finished. The cast took the stage as a group of nineteen, each of whom was handed a microphone, and each of whom used it.
A presenter introduced the In Memoriam segment by reminding the audience that acting is, at its core, the act of being remembered, which several actors in the front row appeared to write down. The montage included a brief, unexplained cutaway to a man waving from a porch who was, according to producers later, not actually deceased.
Backstage, a craft services worker stocking the press room said the green room had run out of the small water bottles by 5:40 p.m. and was now exclusively offering “the medium ones, which nobody wants.” She declined to give her name, citing a non-disclosure agreement she signed for reasons she could not recall.
The ceremony closed, as it does every year, with the cast of a long-canceled ensemble drama reuniting on stage for a tribute nobody requested, during which one member appeared visibly surprised the others were still alive. Ratings are expected to be down again, which the Guild called “a vote of confidence in the work.”