Rabid, Man-Eating Feminist Emma Thompson Wins at Awards Show Speeches

Award-nominated actors, you might as well give up telling self-deprecating jokes in the mirror and put down the quote books you’re mining for award speech inspiration; you’re never going to top the speech Emma Thompson gave at last night’s National Board of Review Gala, or the bomb-ass intro Meryl Streep gave for her. Seriously. Don’t even try.

Streep presented Thompson with the Best Actress award at the event, but not before introducing her with a 10-minute-long speech that contained Streepy wisdom on famewhoring, on how both Emma Thompson and Meryl Streep are “rabid, man-eating feminists,” on how Walt Disney was kind of a sexist pig, and on how funny it would have been to see Walt Disney have to deal with a strong-minded woman. She also wrote a poem about Emma Thompson and read the whole thing. It’s not very good, but Meryl Streep could win an Oscar for reading Pornhub comments.

But it was Thompson who sparkled the sparkliest, giving the following bits of brilliance in her speech, the bulk of which follows:

It’s such a cold night, you know, it’s the only time I’ve been actively grateful for the menopause. There have been moments when I’ve been entirely comfortable. And then they pass.

My dears, what an extraordinary night. Oh yes, I was in a film, I forgot! I’m surrounded by all these amazing people. Oh, Ryan Coogler, I’ll pinch you if you still feel like you’re dreaming. I’ll take you aside and pinch you.

You mustn’t forget that us old people really love to be surrounded by the young. It’s so exciting. There you are, taking over. Hah hah – good luck!

Um, I’m sure I had something to say, but I’ve been rather scuppered by Miss Streep’s extraordinary gift to me. Normally on occasions like this I like to complain, loudly and at length, about the dearth of roles for women, but actually this year they seem to have behaved like buses in London, where you wait for hours for the right one, and then suddenly seventeen come along at once. And so it has been. You know, Meryl and Julia and Octavia and Lea and the Kates, both Blanchett and Winslet, it’s been an extraordinary year for women’s roles.

I can’t think what gave me the edge; it must have been the perm. Which was a great sacrifice; it meant no sex, of course, for months on end. And then only with animal noises accompanying it.

I’d like to thank Kelly Marcel for writing someone so relentlessly unpleasant. Actually, it was an artistic chance to let out my real and true inner self. It was such bliss torturing all those young men, and I include Hanks, obviously, in that category. He’s always looked like he needed a good smack.

And Alison Owen, who produced a film about a 60-year-old woman which wasn’t about her being a wife or a mother. When does that happen? Never. Extraordinary.

And, of course, John Lee Hancock, who corralled a group of actors who would literally sell their internal organs to get the laugh. We would do anything to get a laugh, and he managed to make us look quite poignant in the end, which was extraordinary, I thought.

The NBR, thank you so much. And thank you again, Meryl. That was an amazing experience. I’ve taken my heels off as a feminist statement really, because why do we wear them? They’re so painful. And pointless, really. You know, I really would like to urge everyone to stop it. Just stop it. Don’t wear them anymore. You just can’t walk in them, and I’m so comfortable now.

But much love to you all. Thank you so very much.

I get it: we’re living in the age of the hyperbolic, hyper-positive headline. But in this case there’s no hyperbole; Emma Thompson, I believe, just won award speeches forever. Her speech was, as they say, FULL OF WIN and EXPLODING WITH AWESOME and TEH BEST.