Santa Barbara Film Festival: Virtuoso Award Honorees
Danielle Deadwyler,Ke Huy Quan, Stephanie Hsu, and Jeremy Pope - Mike Marsland / JC Olivera / Stringer / Elyse Jankowski
At the Santa Barbara International Film Festival on Wednesday, February 15, 2023, eight performers were feted with Virtuoso Awards: Austin Butler (Elvis), Kerry Condon (The Banshees Of Inisherin), Danielle Deadwyler (Till), Nina Hoss (Tár), Stephanie Hsu (Everything Everywhere All At Once), Jeremy Pope (The Inspection), Ke Huy Quan (Everything Everywhere All At Once) and Jeremy Strong (Armageddon Time).
The Virtuoso Award is an honor created to recognize multiple “up-and-coming” actors for achieving breakthrough performances in a film that has elevated them into the national cinematic dialogue. The Virtuoso Awards gathering at Santa Barbara’s historic Arlington Theatre was moderated by Turner Classic Movie’s (TCM) Dave Karger, who spoke on stage with each honoree individually before convening the entire group for a conversation.
Quan reflected on his road back to acting throughout the talk, having spent most of the time since leaving his child stardom working in support roles on movie sets. He asserts that the acting bug found its way back to the surface after being hidden for so long. When asked if he would play Waymond in Everything Everywhere All at Once, Quan responded, “All of those experiences that I’d had, I brought all of them into that character.”
Pope talked about his fulfilling and exhausting completion of a Broadway run as Jean-Michel Basquiat in The Collaboration. Pope spiritedly spoke about his portrayal in The Inspection as director Elegance Bratton, a gay man who served in the military during the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” era. The film was shot in just 19 days in a scorching Jackson, Mississippi. Pope, who is himself openly gay, said his character, “Started to bring up some ugly truths in myself, things that I hadn’t dealt with, and it was very healing.”
Quan’s costar Hsu spoke about the emotional climax of her performance and the film, when her character confronts her mother, and said, “I’ll never forget that scene.”
Deadwyler, when asked how she felt to be the subject of “Oscar snub outrage,” responded that she was still feeling the love from her fans. Instead of being frustrated, Deadwyler sees the awards season as presenting an opportunity to share the themes, the goals, and the intentions of her film Till. Deadwyler believed that Mamie Till Mobley, the woman she portrays in the film, “wanted this film made,” and continued by claiming that despite the Oscar snub, creating Till was, “Nothing but a win in every sense of the word.”
Following their return to the stage, the honorees answered many of Karger's questions. A dance between Pope and Deadwyler, Hsu's admission that she'd like to play Charlie Chaplin in a silent movie, and Pope's rendition of "What About Love" by Heart were some of the highlights of this series of questions. Jane Lynch, a Santa Barbara resident and Emmy winner, complimented the honorees and gave them their awards to end the celebration.