Read Frances McDormand's Epic Best Actress Speech

by Stephanie Maida · March 5, 2018

As the very long night began winding down, Frances McDormand certainly knew how to wake everybody back up. Taking home the Oscar for her starring role in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, McDormand used her Best Actress speech to call attention to gender equality.

After a nod to US Olympic snowboarder Chloe Kim, the star turned to all the female nominees in the room:

And now, I want to give some perspective. If I may be so honored to have all the female nominees in every category stand with me in this room tonight. The actors—Meryl, if you do it everyone else will—the filmmakers, the producers, the directors, the writers, the cinematographers, the composers, the song writers, the designers. Come on! Okay, look around everybody, look around, ladies and gentleman because we all have stories to tell and projects we need financed. Don’t talk to us about it at the parties tonight. Invite us into your office in a couple days or you can come to ours, whichever suits you best, and we can tell you all about them. I have two words to leave with you tonight, ladies and gentleman, inclusion rider.

For those scratching their heads at the last part, an inclusion rider, as Whitney Cummings explained on Twitter, is "something actors put into their contracts to ensure gender and racial equality in hiring on movie sets. We should support this for a billion reasons, but if you can't find a reason to, here's one: it will make movies better."

an inclusion rider is something actors put into their contracts to ensure gender and racial equality in hiring on movie sets. We should support this for a billion reasons, but if you can't find a reason to, here's one: it will make movies better.
— Whitney Cummings (@WhitneyCummings) March 5, 2018