Regina King was among the Emmy winners who used the remote ceremony to highlight the national struggle for social justice. The “Watchmen” star wore a T-shirt featuring Breonna Taylor. (Sept. 20)
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Regina King has been named one of Glamour’s Women of the Year and true to form, she’s using her spotlight to speak on social justice issues.
Though King has had quite the successful year, from winning an Emmy for “Watchmen” to becoming the first Black woman director to have a film screened at Venice Film Festival, she says celebrating those wins amid the pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 is “bittersweet” and “sobering.”
“I’m just allowing myself to be okay with being emotional and being honest about being emotional,” King tells Glamour in a cover feature published Tuesday. “I really think it’s really important to be honest about all the stuff that we’re feeling right now. The worst thing that we can do is to not be true to ourselves about how we feel.”
King says though she is overall happy and remains hopeful despite the circumstances, she wants to see change during her lifetime.
“I’ve got to believe that a phoenix is going to rise as all of this (expletive) burns down. I say that and I’m including everything from the climate changing to the pandemic,” she says. “It’s just so much. It’s so much and it’s all happening at once.”
The “If Beale Street Could Talk” actress added that she believes the coronavirus pandemic contributed to the Black Lives Matter movement getting global attention and though she doesn’t like to think of Black people’s death as martyrdom, she questions “if Jacob Blake hadn’t happened, would everything have calmed down? Would people have stopped making noise?”
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King joins Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, New York’s Elmhurst Hospital essential workers Navdeep Kaur, Jasmin Moshirpur, Veronica Henry and Meida Sanchez, NAACP Legal Defense Fund president Sherrilyn Ifill, and activist Dolores Huerta as Glamour’s Women of the Year.
“The 2020 class of honorees is no exception: frontline hospital workers, a civil rights lawyer, a headstrong politician, a labor rights icon, and a superstar actress bringing untold stories to the screen,” the magazine’s editor-in-chief Samantha Barry said in a statement adding that she wants to recognize Glamour’s audience as well. “To live through this moment is to demonstrate Herculean resolve, resilience, and power. We all deserve an award for getting through it, tears, breakdowns, and all. And so this year belongs to each and every one of you—our women of the year.”
Glamour’s Women of the Year will be honored Oct. 19 at 7 p.m. during a film special on YouTube and Twitter where Ryan Reynolds, Gabrielle Union, John Legend and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, among others, will celebrate the honorees.
More: Singers Dolly Parton, Aretha Franklin and Queen Latifah among Women of the Century for entertainment
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