Every Viral Moment of the Night

The “I Am an Actor” segment again kicked off a night that showcased the best of the best in both film and television, with actors telling a bit of their stories as performers. On the big screen, Wicked continued its dominant ways, with five total nominations, followed by A Complete Unknown with four, and Anora and Emilia Pérez with three each.

On the television side, Shōgun matched Wicked with five total nominations, followed by The Bear, The Diplomat, and The Penguin, with three apiece.

Jonathan Bailey joined both Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande with acting nods, while Wicked was also up for its Stunt Ensemble and Cast. Anna Sawai picked up an acting nod on the women’s side, while Tadanobu Asano and Hiroyuki Sanada compete against each other on the men’s side. The FX series will also compete for Drama Ensemble.

On the limited series or TV movie slate, The Penguin got a lot of love, along with Baby Reindeer, with each picking up male and female lead nominations for Colin Farrell and Cristin Milioti for the Batman spinoff and Richard Gadd and Jessica Gunning for the true crime drama.

The Bear continued its comedy dominance with acting nods for Jeremy Allen White, Ayo Edebiri, and Liza Colón-Zayas, as well as a Comedy Ensemble nomination. Host Bell is also competing in Comedy Series, as is her Nobody Wants This costar Adam Brody.

Other notable nominees on the night included Pamela Anderson and Jamie Lee Curtis for The Last Showgirl, Demi Moore for The Substance, Nicola Coughlan for Bridgerton, and a one-two shot for Kathy Bates with Matlock and The Great Lillian Hall. Plus, comedy icon Julia Louis-Dreyfus was on hand to celebrate the career of Jane Fonda with the SAG Life Achievement Award.

As always, the show opened with a segment featuring a few of the famous faces in the crowd sharing their “I Am an Actor” story, but it was one of the biggest actors on the planet who stole the spotlight of the whole segment … without saying a word.

From Mikey Madison’s wild journey through Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, to Jodie Foster’s Coppertone commercial story, we got to enjoy some truly charming stories, and one hilarious bite of food.

As Shrinking star Jessica Williams got the spotlight to share her story, all eyes were immediately drawn to costar Harrison Ford, sitting next to her and peering over her shoulder as he noshed on a snack.

It quickly stole her moment in the most adorable way, as she jokingly snapped, “I told him to turn away,” yelling back at him, “Don’t look!”

As we look across a sea of famous faces at the height of their careers, it’s easy to forget that all of them were once struggling actors fighting for any moment of screen time to “make it” in this business.

At least it was, until Kristen Bell dropped an epic parody of a Frozen classic “Do You Want to Be an Actor?” Almost no star was left unexplored as she sang her song alongside some of their earliest moments, including that aforementioned Jodie Foster suntan lotion ad.

She even shared a clip from her one of her own earliest projects. Even better, most of the clips where paired with a live shot from the audience as the celebrities were surprised by and got to relive their nascent acting skills. It’s also a beautiful reminder that everyone starts somewhere, so keep going!

Picking up the win for Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain, Kieran Culkin opened with a hilarious dig at Adrien Brody as he noted that winners are given 45 seconds — before immediately backing down and apologizing for the light-hearted jab.

“There was no reason to take that shot. I love you. It’s a joke. You take your time,” he quickly told his fellow nominee.

He went on to thank his “wonderful, gorgeous, funny wife Jazz,” and offered a special shoutout to costar, screenwriter and director Eisenberg — counting himself out of time as he did so — who took a chance on him for this role without an audition.

If there was one consistent theme through the 2025 SAG Awards, it was that the teleprompters might have been the true villains of the night.

From Mikey Madison’s Anora Russian costars reading the stage directions to Joey King completely missing that they were telling her Martin Short wasn’t there, the teleprompters created more awkward and cringeworthy moments than the tongue-tied stars and the scripted bits.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus marveled at Jane Fonda’s incredible career both in Hollywood and in her activism, marveling that she’s still working so hard at 87 years old. Louis-Dreyfus quipped that she should slow down as she’s “making us all look like s–t.”

She touted Fonda’s incredible life of awards and accolades, which includes being on Richard Nixon’s enemies list … which Louis-Dreyfus thinks is probably her most impressive accomplishment, all things considered.

“Even though we somehow get to call you our peer, you are absolutely peerless,” said Louis-Dreyfus as Fonda ascended to the stage, still as radiant and inspiring as ever.

“This means the world to me,” Fonda said, immediately falling victim to the night’s glitchy technicals. “What about the sound system?” she asked, before quipping, I’m gonna talk loud!” Later, she definitely had to do that as a voiceover tried to interrupt her mid-speech, quipping about the power of actors, “I can conjure up voices!”

“Your enthusiasm makes it seem less like a twilight of my life and more like a go girl, kick ass!” she smiled, touching the award. “Which is good, because I’m not done.”

She went on to talk about her unorthodox career, and her outspoken nature. “For a woman like me, who grew up in the ’40s and ’50s when women weren’t supposed to have opinions and get angry,” she shared, “acting gave me a chance to play angry women with opinions, which as you know is a bit of a stretch for me.”

Fonda talked about the importance of acting, which sees performers having to empathize with victims and perpetrators alike, quickly pivoting to Sebastian Stan’s work as Donald Trump in The Apprentice.

She railed against woke — “just means you give a damn about other people” — and then shifted back to empathy to say, “a whole lot of people are going to be really hurt by what is happening, what is coming our way. And if they’re of a different political persuasion, we need to call upon our empathy and not judge, but listen from our hearts, and welcome them into our tent, because we are gonna need a big tent to resist successfully what’s coming at us.”

The screen icon then asked everyone if they’d ever wondered while watchign stories of oppression if they’d be brave enough to stand up for what’s right.

“We don’t have to wonder anymore because we are in our documentary moment. This is it,” she said, “and it’s not a rehearsal. This is it and we mustn’t for a moment kid ourselves about what’s happening. This is big time serious, folks, so let’s be brave.”

We stan an iconic reunion, and there are few duos more iconic than David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson. The X-Files stars came together on the stage to present the award for Best Ensemble in a Drama Series and left us wondering if they’d perhaps been abducted by aliens.

While part of it was scripted, such as the awkward joke about Anderson looking younger than ever, and their quip about the importance in any partnership of “timing” — or is that “chemistry,” but a lot of it was just mess.

Anderson joked about just how “funny” it was, which got bigger laughs than any of the scripted bits, and Duchovny went completely off the rails trying to read the winners before even revealing the nominees — even getting a scolding from behind the curtain.

Luckily, the ever practical Scully was on hand to pull Mulder’s head out of the clouds and keep things on track! Fans were loving the charming reunion moment.