The 33rd Annual GLAAD Media Awards took place in Los Angeles on Saturday, and many of our favorite shows and movies took home some prizes. We were especially excited to see Marvel’s Eternals win the award for Outstanding Film – Wide Release. The MCU movie managed to beat out Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, The Mitchells vs. the Machines, tick, tick… BOOM!, and West Side Story, which was just nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards.
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The GLAAD Media Awards are given by GLAAD to recognize branches of the media for their representations of the LGBTQ community. Eternals was an important step for Marvel as it featured the franchise’s first gay kiss. While the MCU still has a ways to go in terms of representation, Phase Four is already off to a good start with huge characters like Loki (Tom Hiddleston) coming out as bisexual. In Eternals, Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry) is married to Ben (Haaz Steiman), and the two have a son together.
“It’s my first Marvel film, so of course I’m excited,” Steiman told NewNowNext last year before Eternals was released. “My gut feeling is you’ll be so proud. What Marvel has been able to accomplish, I’m so proud of them because they approached it in a very thoughtful way, and Phastos is one of the biggest superheroes in the film. I’m his husband, an architect; we have a child. Even though I wished I was the superhero, because when will we see an Arab Muslim openly gay actor playing a superhero? I can’t wait to see it.”
“Oh, yeah, absolutely, and it’s a beautiful, very moving kiss. Everyone cried on set,” Sleiman added. “For me it’s very important to show how loving and beautiful a queer family can be. Brian Tyree Henry is such a tremendous actor and brought so much beauty into this part, and at one point I saw a child in his eyes, and I think it’s important for the world to be reminded that we in the queer community were all children at one point. We forget that because we’re always depicted as sexual or rebellious. We forget to connect on that human part.”
Other GLAAD winners include Saved by the Bell (Outstanding Comedy Series), Hacks (Outstanding New TV Series), RuPaul’s Drag Race (Outstanding Reality Program), Crush & Lobo (Outstanding Comic Book), and Cheer Up! Love and Pompoms (Outstanding Original Graphic Novel/Anthology).
Eternals is now streaming on Disney+.
