Actor Jack Black took the stage at the BOVET 1822 and Paul Haggis’s Artists for Peace and Justice inaugural “Songs from the Cinema” benefit concert and said he hopes Meryl Streep trashes President Donald Trump from the podium at Sunday’s Academy Awards.
“Is Meryl Streep in the audience tonight?” Black said. “I just hope she wins the Oscar and talks some more shit about that asshole.”
Streep used her Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award acceptance speech at the Golden Globes last month to urge media and Hollywood to stand up to Trump, “to hold power to account, to call to the carpet for every outrage.”
Black told the star-studded audience Thursday that Streep’s anti-Trump speech “took balls.”
“They will say, ‘That’s just liberals patting themselves on the back.’ I don’t agree. I thought it took balls,” the Kung Fu Panda 3 star said. “I was inspired by it. To get up there and tell the truth about the President of the United States, in front of a billion people. That takes courage. And it was very inspiring.”
Streep is nominated for Best Actress for her role in Florence Foster Jenkins. And while she is not expected to win — Emma Stone, for La La Land, is the frontrunner — the Oscars will likely be as politically charged as the Golden Globes and the Grammys.
Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson.