Oprah became the first recipient of the inaugural The Hollywood Reporter‘s Empowerment in Entertainment Award. The award honours those who have created opportunities for people of colour, women, members of the LGBTQI commuity and other emerging voices in the industry.
In addition to being its first recipient, the award will be named after the media mogul titled, the Oprah Winfrey Empowerment in Entertainment Award.
Grammy-award winning musician Alicia Keys presented the award to Oprah sharing in part; “Ms. O proves that you can be a super successful billionaire and shine light at the same time. She shows me that there’s no such thing as the only way to get to greatness, instead everyone can carve their own path! We are grateful for you and blessed to stand in your light,”
Oprah, as usual, gave a stirring speech in which she praised her friend and colleague Ava DuVernay sharing in part; “Leading the charge in employing female directors for our beautiful scripted series, Queen Sugar. I’m delighted to announce that we have hired 28 first-time female TV directors during our four seasons of production. These filmmakers were not able to get a job in television because no one was willing to take a chance on them. But Ava was not only willing to, she was wanting to. And now, as much as we’d love to hire them back, they’re all too busy working on other projects. That is incredible.”
Oprah receives The Hollywood Reporter’s first-ever Empowerment in Entertainment Award. Here’s a look at her full speech.
