Piers Morgan has slammed Emma Watson for accepting the non-gender award for ‘Best Actor’ at last night’s MTV Movie and TV Awards, sarcastically blasting the Beauty and the Beast star as “a worthy recipient” of the new prize.
Watson won the award last night for her work in the Disney adaptation, which was released back in March. Last night’s ceremony saw the introduction of two gender-neutral awards, with gongs awarded for film and television respectively – Stranger Things‘ Millie Bobby Brown picked up the prize in the latter category.
However, Morgan has criticised MTV’s decision to introduce the new categories, and reserved particular ire for Watson for accepting the honour. Speaking on today’s episode of Good Morning Britain, Morgan ranted: “Gender neutral awards, just what the world was craving. I can’t think of a better recipient than Emma Watson, a great flag bearer of all things gender neutral.
“Women will now win a lot less awards because they’ve made them gender neutral and there are more male actors so actually in trying to get equality you end up with more inequality,” he continued. “It’s a masterpiece.”
Returning to the topic later, Morgan said: “Is the world becoming gender neutral? Do we need to have men and women? Do we just get rid of all of it and take the ‘man’ out of ‘woman’ and call them ‘woes’? You’ve got man in there, that’s offensive and sexist. We can’t be ‘men’ anymore, we have to be called persons and everything becomes gender neutral… The Queen can’t be called the Queen anymore and we can’t call her ‘her majesty’ so she’ll have to be ‘the majesty.
“Eventually I’ll have to smash my head repeatedly into a brick wall. I think it’s all utterly ridiculous.”
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Picking up her award last night, Watson praised MTV for introducing the new categories.
“The first acting award… that doesn’t separate nominees based on their sex says something about how we perceive the human experience,” she said. “MTV’s move to create a genderless award for acting will mean something different to everyone.
“But to me it indicates that acting is about the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and that doesn’t need to be separated into two different categories. Empathy and the ability to use your imagination should have no limits. This is very meaningful to me.”
Watch Watson’s speech below.
Thank you for your beautiful Best Actor in a Movie acceptance speech at the #MTVAwards, @EmmaWatson ? pic.twitter.com/iGN3nQQylL
— MTV (@MTV) May 8, 2017