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Writer/director Jordan Peele accepts Best Original Screenplay for ‘Get Out’ onstage during the 90th Annual Academy Awards at the Dolby Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center on March 4, 2018 in Hollywood, California Kevin Winter/Getty Images
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Oscars 2018: Jordan Peele nets history-making Academy Award for best original screenplay for ‘Get Out’

He’s the first black person to win the award

Soraya Nadia McDonald @sorayamcdonald
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    11:11 PMActor, writer and director Jordan Peele has a new title for himself: Academy Award-winning screenwriter.

    Actually, it’s history-making, Academy Award-winning screenwriter. He’s the first black person to win the award for original screenplay.

    “I stopped writing this film about 20 times because I thought it was impossible,” Peele said during his acceptance speech, figuring that no one would let him make a film where the black hero violently kills a bunch of white people. (They totally had it coming, by the way.)

    Peele dedicated his Oscar to his mother, “who taught me to love in the face of hate,” he said.

    At publishing time, the Oscars for best picture, best director or best actor, the other categories for which Get Out netted nominations, had not been announced yet. Peele still has the opportunity to make history again. He’s only the fifth black man in the 90-year history of the Oscars to be nominated for best director. The other four are John Singleton, Lee Daniels, Steve McQueen and Barry Jenkins.

    Soraya Nadia McDonald is the senior culture critic for Andscape. She writes about pop culture, fashion, the arts and literature. She is the 2020 winner of the George Jean Nathan prize for dramatic criticism, a 2020 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism and the runner-up for the 2019 Vernon Jarrett Medal for outstanding reporting on Black life.