At the Oscars last night, Sam Smith was awarded Best Original Song for “Writing’s On the Wall,” the theme for Spectre. During Smith’s acceptance speech, he mentioned that he read somewhere no openly gay man had ever won an Oscar. He went on to dedicate his statue to the LGBT community.
There was one minor problem with Smith’s speech, however. Upon exiting the stage, Smith found that he was wrong—he is not the first openly gay male Oscar winner. He responded with a few expletives, followed by, “Two’s my lucky number, so it’s all good. Who was the other person?” Newsflash: There have been quite a few more openly gay male Oscar winners than Smith initially thought—including the iconic Elton John.
One of those past winners got a little bit feisty with the singer via Twitter, but we won’t get into that. Just know that Sam has since apologized as eloquently as we could’ve hoped for.
My point was to shine some light on the LGBT community who i love so dearly.
— Sam Smith (@samsmithworld) February 29, 2016
Second openly gay man to win an oscar or third or fourth or 100th, It wasn’t my point.
— Sam Smith (@samsmithworld) February 29, 2016