They may have spent their whole lives preparing for this moment, practicing their acceptance speeches in front of the mirror while clutching hairbrushes like statuettes, but for those who emerged victorious from the Academy Awards, the reality of actually being handed an Oscar clearly takes some getting used to. Backstage in the press room, we got a front-row seat as winners staggered through, looking like deer caught in headlights coming from every direction.

Even the first winner of the night, Kieran Culkin, who made his film debut aged seven in Home Alone, looked like he was levitating over the stage. “I’m not fully inside my body right now,” he murmured through a wide grin. “I’m trying my best to be present.” Despite his dazed look, Culkin characteristically still cracked jokes, making fun of the numbers journalists had to hold overhead to get the moderator’s attention: “Number two-thousand eight hundred and sixty-four… what’s your question?”

There weren’t quite that many of us, even if it seemed like it from the stage. I was one of around 175 journalists from 40 different countries and territories who made it through the barriers that cordon off a long stretch of Hollywood Boulevard and past the bomb-sniffing dogs to be the first to greet actors and filmmakers as they celebrate what may well be the high water mark of their professional lives. “This is the pinnacle of my career,” said Paul Tazewell, the first Black man to ever win the Oscar for Best Costume Design for his work on Wicked, before movingly describing his journey through an industry without role models. “The whole way through, there was never a Black male designer that I could follow, that I could see as inspiration,” he said. “To realize that that’s actually me, is a Wizard of Oz moment. There’s no place like home.”

Continue reading at The Independent