The award was presented by Tracee Ellis Ross and U.S. Congresswoman Maxine Waters, which made it even more special for Henson who also won in the ‘Best Hero’ category the same evening for her role in the Theodore Melfi directed movie.
As Taraji stepped on stage to accept the ‘Best Fight Against the System’ award, which it won against movies like ‘Loving’, Luke Cage and Mr. Robot, here is what she had to say:
This movie was very important. I feel weird because there’s pieces of the perfect puzzle that are missing tonight. My sisters, Octavia Spencer, and Janelle Monet, wherever you are, I love you. Our beautiful director Ted Melfi, I love you so much. I love you. This movie was bigger than all of us. We understood that, we understood the task at hand. We understood that this is a part of history that needed to be reimplemented into the blood and the veins of American history.
She further stated:
And for me, it was very important because I grew up with an understanding. No one ever told me that girls couldn’t do math and science, but there was an understanding, right? There was an understanding that it was for boys. So I remember getting this script, being very upset because I felt like a dream was stolen from me. And it became my mission and everyone’s mission who was involved with this film, to dispel that myth so that another young girl would not grow up thinking that her mind wasn’t capable of grasping math and science. If it were not for these women, we wouldn’t be in space. And not only that, the message of the movie is togetherness. Like I hate the separatism, I hate that it’s man versus woman, black versus white, gay versus straight. Whatever. We’re all humans, right. God is very clever. God is very clever. He made us all different for a reason so we better figure it out.
More power to Taraji and to the people who tell us such compelling and important stories!
Taraji was also nominated for BEST ACTOR IN A MOVIE – MTV’s first gender neutral acting category, which she lost to Emma Watson, who won for her role in ‘Beauty and The Beast’ and gave a moving and compelling speech herself on gender equality.
Watch her powerful speech below: