Let’s Give It Up for Hollywood’s Assistants

At the 2024 Golden Globes on Sunday night, Ayo Edebiri won the prestigious award for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy TV Series for The Bear. Just when we thought The People’s Irish Princess couldn’t possibly get any more benevolent, the actor/producer/writer delivered a hilariously frazzled acceptance speech in which she thanked those who keep Hollywood running: the assistants.

Edebiri looked stunning in custom Prada with an ample train trailing behind her as she went up to accept her award, but the look was just the cherry on top. The Golden Globes are no stranger to controversy, and the 81st annual run of the show was the first since the historic 148-day and 118-day WGA and SAG strikes, respectively—a momentous and celebratory occasion for the writers and visionaries who (for months) picketed for fair wages and reasonable equity. Through all the glitz and glamor of the night, Edebiri remembered the people—the too-often forgotten people who are there to help the gears turn behind the scenes.

“I am so very grateful for this. I’m in a room full of so many people who I admire and whose work has lifted me up,” The Bear star said onstage between hurried breaths trying to gather her thoughts. “I’m an artist, and I’m very lucky to be an artist, and I know we all feel that way, so I just really want to acknowledge that.” 

After thanking her The Bear family and her biological family, she rummaged her brain for those she might be leaving out. “There’s so many people who I probably forgot to thank and—oh my God, all of my agents and managers assistants,” she remembered. “The people who answer my emails. Y’all are real ones. Thank you for answering my crazy, crazy emails. Yeah, I’m really, really grateful. If I forgot to thank you, I’m sorry. Unless you were mean or something.” I need to know who was mean to Ayo… name ‘em!

Aside from The Killers of the Flower Moon star Lily Gladstone’s historical win as the first Indigenous actor to earn the Globe for Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama, Edebiri’s shoutout was one of the evening’s few truly endearing and pure moments — a refreshing break from host Jo Koy’s distasteful Barbie jokes or Kylie Jenner and Timothée Chalamet’s unexpected peck gone viral. When Edebiri’s inflection changed to emphasize just how hard the assistants cut their teeth, the room erupted in applause, with a headline-making nod of agreement from Taylor Swift. 

Outside the auditorium, hard-working people everywhere — whether they are or ever have been someone's assistant or not — were nodding and clapping and hell-yessing in agreement. Edebiri made the humble hoi polloi feel seen. You know why burnout culture and quiet quitting exist? Because too many people work too hard without acknowledgement or appreciation. Here was a funny, and beautiful, and successful person saying: I know you hustle, and I am grateful.

Edebiri won for The Bear’s second season, which is when the temperature between Edebiri’s character, Sydney, and her underwear model co-star Jeremy Allen White’s character, Carmy, really starts to heat up. Her good fortune (or luck of the Irish) extended throughout late 2023 as Edebiri stacked her resume with project after project — the raunchy lesbian misfit teen comedy Bottoms; the theater kid comedy Theater Camp; a guest spot on Quinta Brunson’s Abbot Elementary; an animated role as an investigatory reporter in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem; and the upcoming 1970s-inspired road trip film The Sweet East. 

The recognition of people who often fly under the radar (intentionally or not) isn’t a blink-and-you-missed-it moment. Edebiri has walked the walk. Before she said “Yes, chef” to The Bear, she was a staff writer on Apple TV+’s Dickinson, the Hailee Steinfeld-helmed series set from the POV of a young Emily Dickinson. Edebiri is currently writing and starring in Netflix’s Big Mouth, and she also earned a WGA writing award for her work on What We Do In The Shadows. 

Edebiri’s good fortune isn’t the luck of the Irish, but instead the karmic result of hard work—what happens when you diligently respond to those crazy, crazy emails.