‘Nope,’ ‘Wakanda Forever,’ and Jeff Goldblum Among PETA Oscat Winners
For Immediate Release:
March 2, 2023
Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382
Today PETA is announcing its annual Oscat Award winners, right as final voting begins for the 95th Academy Awards. For the sixth year running, the group is recognizing compassionate stars and movies that used storylines, costumes, and special effects to promote kindness to animals.
Winning Best Actor for his role in Jurassic World: Dominion, Jeff Goldblum wowed PETA with his speech as Dr. Ian Malcolm, warning against using animals (dinosaurs) in research and declaring that “human beings have no more right to safety or liberty than any other creature on this planet.” Best Actress went to Tilda Swinton for her compassionate decision to star alongside her own dog Louis in The Eternal Daughter, meaning that the dog has a loving home—not a barren cage at a training compound, which is the sad reality for many dogs in Hollywood—to return to after filming.
Also making film sets kinder to animals, costume designer Ruth E. Carter chose all faux fur for the cast of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, earning her a Faux for Fox Sake Oscat. PETA says “Yup” to Jordan Peele with its Primo Primate award for his use of a computer-generated chimpanzee in Nope’s haunting depiction of why wild animals don’t belong on television sets. (Hint: The stress can make them attack their captors.)
“Animal advocacy got its close-up over the past year, from warnings about the dangers of forcing chimpanzees into the spotlight to impassioned speeches against human supremacy,” says PETA Senior Vice President Lisa Lange. “Hollywood has come a long way, and PETA is delighted to celebrate all the leaders working to bring kindness to the big screen.”
Other winning films with positive messaging include the star-studded Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, which nabbed Best Animated Feature for promoting adoption and condemning hoarding and declawing animals. Fresh won the Meat Is Murder Oscat for depicting humans forced into captivity as an allegory for the meat industry’s cruelty. And in thanks to The Bad Guys for demonstrating that the real villains were the ones who tested on animals, the film won a Test Students, Not Animals award.
The winners will each receive a framed certificate, and the full list of awards is available here.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. Anyone who sees an animal used for a production or abused at an animal-training compound should report it at PETA.org/Report or 323-210-2233. For more information, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
Note: “Oscar,” “Oscars,” “Academy Award,” and “Academy Awards” are registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which isn’t affiliated or associated with PETA, nor does it endorse, sponsor, or otherwise approve of PETA’s Oscats.
