SAG awards: diversity is the night's winner in pointed counter to Oscars 

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Diversity dominates SAG awards amid Oscars race controversy

Last modified on Sunday 31 January 2016 05.52 EST

The Screen Actors Guild awards provided a counterbalance to the much-protested lack of ethnic diversity the Oscar nominations on Saturday as the actors union honoured four black actors: Idris Elba, who won two awards, Viola Davis, Uzo Aduba and Queen Latifah.

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to diverse TV,” said Elba, presenting an award after Davis’s win. The British actor won outstanding performance by a male actor in a supporting role for Beasts of No Nation, and outstanding performance by a male actor in a TV movie or miniseries for Luther. Controversially, he has been overlooked entirely for the Oscars.

The top award went to Spotlight for outstanding performance by a cast in a motion picture, about the Boston Globe’s expose of a network of paedophile priests. Michael Keaton dedicated the award to “the disenfranchised everywhere, for every Flint, Michigan in the world, for the disadvantaged and the powerless”. He added: “There’s fair and there’s unfair and I’m always going to vote for the good guys.”

However, the film’s rival for the best picture Oscar, The Big Short, is still the hot favourite, as it won the Producers Guild award – a reliable bellweather for the top prize at the Academy awards.

It was also a good night for British actors, with Downton Abbey winning outstanding performance by an ensemble in a drama series. Meanwhile Australian Ruby Rose won as part of the Orange is the New Black ensemble, and Mad Max: Fury Road took home best performance by a stunt ensemble.

Leonardo DiCaprio’s trajectory to his first Oscar looks unassailable as the actor picked up the outstanding performance by a male actor in a leading role for The Revenant, to add to the Golden Globe he won earlier this month. On the red carpet, DiCaprio described the film as “epic arthouse” and said that it was the kind of film he’d like to make more of – despite a famously gruelling shoot that saw the actor eating raw bison liver, an incident mocked by Amy Poehler and Tina Fey when presenting the lifetime achievement award to Carol Burnett.

“So you slept in a horse, and you ate bison liver, big whoop,” said Poehler. “Carol would have slept in that horse, worn it, done a song and a dance and made a much funnier face after eating something very disgusting.”

The TV awards saw streaming sites dominate, with Netflix’s Orange is the New Black taking two awards and Jeffrey Tambor taking outstanding performance by a male actor in a comedy series for his lead role as a transgender woman in Amazon Prime’s Transparent. Tambor dedicated his award to the transgender people who don’t have the wealth and privileges of his character, “for their operations, for their medicines, for their freedom”.

Winning outstanding performance by a female actor in a drama series, Davis gave arguably the most stirring speech of the night, saying: “People are always saying, ‘Wow, Annalise is an anti-hero. Don’t you worry she’s not likable? Don’t you worry that she’s not a mentor?’ And I always think: ‘Why do I have to be a hero? Why do you have to like me? Why do I have to be a mentor?’ My job as an actor is to create a human being to the best of my ability. Flawed, messy, maybe not always likable. Maybe not cute. But it is my job and I do it to the best of my ability and I get so much joy out of being an actor.”

Meanwhile Alicia Vikander, who won outstanding performance by a female actor in a supporting role for The Danish Girl, thanked the trans community in her tearful acceptance speech, another indication of the respect for diversity that set this ceremony apart from the Oscars.