Dede Gardner made history at this year’s Academy Awards. With “Moonlight’s” shocking Best Picture win on Sunday, the Plan B producer became a two-time Best Picture winner. She’s the first female producer to accomplish this feat, TheWrap reports. She previously won in 2014 for “12 Years a Slave.”
“Moonlight’s” big night at the Oscars was record-breaking on a number of fronts. “Earlier in the night, ‘Moonlight’ writers Barry Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, also a historic win that made them the fourth and fifth black honorees of the night, setting an all-time record,” the source details.
The coming-of-age drama centers on a young black gay man growing up in Miami, and depicts different points in his life. According to GLAAD, “Moonlight” is the first Best Picture winner with an LGBTQ protagonist.
“Congratulations to ‘Moonlight’ on its well-deserved win for Best Picture,” GLAAD president and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said in a statement. “Film is our largest cultural export and must represent the full diversity of the people who make up this country. This sends a strong message to the film industry that it needs to embrace inclusive stories if it wants to remain competitive and relevant.”
When asked about diversity in cinema and at the Oscars in 2016, Gardner spoke about her responsibility as a producer to tell inclusive stories. “I think we can always improve — I think everyone can improve,” she answered. “What I think is that it’s a discussion that has an origin much earlier than the Oscars. Obviously, the Oscars are the result of a more serious condition. It’s about storytelling, and to the extent that the choice of what stories get told lies in the hands of producers, then it is our responsibility to ensure that stories are told that reflect our world and our population and our citizenry,” she explained. “We endeavor to heed that responsibility and we will continue to.”
Gardner, whose credits include “Selma,” “The Big Short,” and “The Normal Heart,” continued, “[The Oscars] are a reflection of the stories that were elected to be made and financed. If bigger and bolder fights are being had at the decision-making point, about what stories to make in the first place, I’d like to think you could broaden that spectrum. We’ve certainly tried.”
Gardner serves as an executive producer on Ryan Murphy’s upcoming anthology series “Feud,” set to premiere on FX March 5. The drama’s first season, “Bette and Joan,” portrays the rivalry and power struggle between Bette Davis (Susan Sarandon) and Joan Crawford (Jessica Lange) during production of their 1962 film “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?”
