By now, you might’ve seen that Adrien Brody took home the award for Best Leading Actor at the Oscars last night.
Taylor Hill / FilmMagic
Adrien won for his incredible performance as László Tóth in Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist; also nominated in the esteemed category were Timothée Chalamet for A Complete Unknown, Colman Domingo for Sing Sing, and Ralph Fiennes for Conclave.
Adrien previously won the Best Leading Actor Academy Award in 2003 for his role in The Pianist. He was 29 at the time, making him the youngest actor to receive the accolade.
Adrien’s acceptance speech has since caused quite a stir online, given that the actor went WAY over the allocated 45-second limit. In fact, he was interrupted part-way through his speech when the famous “wrap” music began playing — AKA a signal for the person speaking to finish and leave the stage.
Kevin Winter / Getty Images
However, this didn’t stop him at all — instead of speeding up, he acknowledged the music directly and requested that it be turned off. “I’m wrapping up, please, please. I’m wrapping up; I will wrap up. Please turn the music off. I’ve done this before — thank you. It’s not my first rodeo,” he said as the music was paused.
ITV / Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences / Via youtube.com
You might assume that Adrien began to hurry up and finish after the wrap music played, right? Wrong. Despite promising to be “brief,” the actor continued to talk for over a minute, making his speech a total of around 5 minutes long. The wrap music even ended up being played a second time towards the end!
ITV / Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences / Via youtube.com
If you want, you can watch Adrien’s full speech for yourself here:
ABC News / Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences / Via youtube.com
Several internet users have since expressed their anger at Adrien’s lengthy speech, especially given that other Oscar winners — including winners from movies like I’m Still Here, The Only Girl in the Orchestra, and Emilia Pérez — were played off by the music when they reached the time limit. “Was he trying to make his speech as long as the movie?” one person quipped, referring to The Brutalist’s 3-and-a-half-hour runtime. “It felt like they gave Adrien Brody so much time and it felt like they cut Daniel Blumberg off so fast? The time difference was insane,” said another, who also called out the Academy for giving “unfair time allowances.”
Kevin Winter / Getty Images
“Adrian’s speech was soooo uncomfortable and awkward,” another user wrote. “So rude. ‘This isn’t my first rodeo?’ Seriously that conductor deserves more respect. To treat another performer like that live on stage is so wrong.”
Someone else added, “Adrien Brodey with a 50 minute speech but every foreign person whose first language isn’t English and it takes them a little longer to speak got ushered off in .5 seconds” while others said that Adrien’s speech came off as “pretentious” and “pompous.”
Before long, people began comparing Adrien’s remarks with Timothée Chalamet’s recent speech at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, which took place on Feb. 24.
Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
Several people suggested that while Adrien’s speech came off as “arrogant,” Timothée’s did the complete opposite; the latter actor got extremely candid about how much he wants success, outright stating on stage that he is “in pursuit of greatness” and wants to be “one of the greats.”
Matt Winkelmeyer / Getty Images
“hmm so i do not like how adrien brody was all ‘i’ve done this before’ lol. there is a huge difference between this speech and timothée’s SAG speech and this one was full of arrogance,” someone tweeted. “Adrien Brody saying ‘I’ve done this before shut the music off’…. but Timothee was getting slammed for saying he wanted to be one of the greats… hmmm…. Okay,” another user wrote.
What do you think? LMK down below. Meanwhile, you can check out more of our Oscars coverage right here.
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