Adele, Kerry Washington Honored at THR’s Women in Entertainment Event – The Hollywood Reporter

The Hollywood Reporter‘s Women in Entertainment event, presented by Lifetime, returned on Thursday for its annual celebration of Hollywood’s leading ladies.

This year, the star-studded event — which coincided with the publication of THR’s annual Women in Entertainment Power 100 — honored Adele with the Sherry Lansing Leadership Award, highlighting a woman who is a pioneer in her field. Kerry Washington was also recognized with the Equity in Entertainment Award, honoring her work amplifying the voices of underrepresented communities in the entertainment industry.

Inside the breakfast — this year held at the Beverly Hills Hotel — Will Ferrell kicked off the event, declaring right off the bat, “Isn’t it just time for women to run the planet? I’m serious, I’m not just trying to placate you I swear, but I don’t know what else to do because we, men, have run the show since what, 10,000 BC, and we’re not doing so good.”

He went on to shout out his producing partner Jessica Elbaum and the long list of female-led hits they’ve worked on together — including current awards contender May December — and teased that Adele was also a past collaborator, as he sang backup vocals on “Rolling in the Deep” — and proceeded to give the crowd a musical taste. “Now do you remember me? You had me fired and now you’re probably feeling pretty stupid, so enjoy your award, Adele!” Ferrell deadpanned.

THR co-editor-in-chief Nekesa Mumbi Moody then took the stage alongside THR president of business operations Joe Shields and executive VPs/co-publishers Beth Deutschman Rabishaw and Victoria Gold, as they congratulated this year’s honorees and thanked its event sponsors. The group then brought up Ariana DeBose, who was on hand to present Washington with the Equity in Entertainment Award.

DeBose, who worked with Washington on 2020’s The Prom, told the crowd, “Kerry has squashed the traditional stereotypes of being a Black woman in Hollywood, I would say just being a woman in Hollywood. She has expanded our minds of what we can be” and recalled her support when DeBose expressed she was nervous that her half-Puerto Rican heritage would come into question when taking on West Side Story.

“At that time she imparted this sentiment to me that was sort of this essence: To share in a world that doesn’t necessarily want to truly understand its people is an act of courage. To choose to see the good and the possibility of the world and its people is also an act of courage. You are enough, you are more than enough,” DeBose recalled.

She also noted that she recently spoke to Washington’s Little Fires Everywhere co-stars Lexi Underwood and Tiffany Boone, “and it became very clear we all hold the same feelings about Queen KW. She is an inspiration to women around the world, the epitome of grace, class and leadership — she is a trailblazer. She has shown us what is possible not just in our industry, but in the world. She is the model of hard work and hustle, again, by unapologetically taking up space, without observing the compromise of palatability. That’s my favorite part of you. She has created the space for all of us. The three of us, we’re just a small representation of the equity that she is still creating in real time.”

Washington joined DeBose on stage, as she admitted that equity is not simple, but is nuanced and can be scary “because equity asks us to pause and to see each other, to consider each other’s unique circumstances. Because, let’s be clear, this is not a level playing field. We are not, in real life, on equal ground. Many of us — because of our gender, because of our race, our socio economic reality, our ZIP code, our sexuality, our religion, our physical ability, our personal traumas — many of us are born in a ditch, a deep ditch that has been carved out by systems of inequity. And, don’t get me wrong, I know who we are scrappy, we know how to climb and jump and reach, but we also need boxes. We might still need some of those boxes at times.”

When it comes to entertainment, she added, “I don’t think we can unlock equity until we are able to see really each other and understand who we are and where we come from and what we need. We don’t cultivate equity without making space for each other’s truths. When stories from all different people and backgrounds are told, and people see their story reflected in our media and culture, that starts to weave a thread where everyone is included. That’s the path to equity.”

And in the projects produced by her company Simpson Street, “We are asking people to pause and to reconsider assumptions, the assumptions we make about history, identity, family, power, the criminal justice system, feminism, abortion rights and immigration,” Washington continued. “But we aren’t trafficking in these themes because we want to be overtly political or singularly focused on equity. We just believe that stories about everybody, and about the complicated truths of our time, are worth telling. So we tell them — with a lot of laughter and drama and danger and sex appeal and beauty and cliff-hangers galore.”

Shifting into the scholarship portion of the morning, Dua Lipa presented a video highlighting the past and present high school mentees of THR‘s long-running mentorship program, who are paired with women currently working in Hollywood. The current mentorship class, comprised of Los Angeles teens from underserved areas, each received a $10,000 scholarship to attend the university of their choice from Lifetime, and the incoming 2024 class each received a MacBook endowed by the Wasserman Foundation’s Edie Wasserman Women in Hollywood Fund.

Lipa also presented the morning’s first Chuck Lorre Family Foundation scholarship to Loyola Marymount University, awarded to mentee Alejandra.

Camila Cabello then took the podium — telling the high schoolers, “I’m so inspired by all of you, I’m so excited for you, I’m so proud of you” — to present a second Chuck Lorre Family Foundation scholarship to Chapman University, awarded to mentee Linda.

Lily Gladstone next arrived to present the National Association of Theatre Owners California Nevada’s scholarship to Chapman University to mentee Marilin, first saying to the girls that “even though I’m not from the same communities as all of you, I really feel a connection to you” as a young woman who also went to college on a scholarship. “I know what it feels like not to be seen; I know what it feels like also to be held, raised, loved, cherished and encouraged by my community,” she added.

Billie Lourd followed in presenting a scholarship in the name of her mother Carrie Fisher to Chapman, as Lourd explained that Fisher was a big bookworm and “always wished she had more of an education. So when my dad [CAA’s Bryan Lourd] and I were talking about how she would want us to carry — no pun intended, sorry I had to — on her legacy, education was at the top of the list.” The scholarship was awarded to mentee Samantha.

To close out the event, Helen Mirren stepped on stage to present Adele with the Sherry Lansing honor, recalling when she first heard a song by the superstar in 2008 and “a shiver went down my back — that chill that comes just a few times in your life, when you realize you are listening to a brilliant and game-changing artist. I thought, wow, a goddess walks amongst us,” before joking, “I’ll also never forget the first time I heard her speak on a radio interview. I thought oh my God, not only is she a goddess, but she’s an ordinary Londoner just like me.”

“There are so many things about Adele I so greatly admire — her passion, her soulfulness in her songs, her brilliance as a songwriter, and of course, I cannot fail to mention her incredible work ethic. Just imagine her Las Vegas residency; it began in 2022 and continues through June. I get exhausted in Las Vegas after 24 hours,” Mirren continued. “But even more so, that voice that like an angel comes from a place of great authenticity — she’s a songwriter whose creations resonate with all of us. They are both universal and yet at the same time so personal and so authentic as her words and music grant us access to her own inner life as a woman.”

She went on to commend Adele’s vulnerability in her music and her silent work as a philanthropist, concluding, “Put simply, Adele the human being sings just as beautifully out of the spotlight as she does at the microphone center-stage.”

Adele — who graces the cover of THR this week — was greeted by a standing ovation, and joked that she’s “not really a motivational words kind of gal” and has never written an acceptance speech like this in her life, but she does have “the gift of the gab” — “I can absolutely talk for hours and your ear off, but when I talk for hours, it’s about nothing.” The star also teased she was “ready for a drink” as she was jetlagged from a London flight, while dropping a couple of F-bombs and admitting she was starstruck to meet Dua Lipa.

On a more serious note, Adele added that the award felt very big and grown up and felt too young to receive it at 35, but she realized that she had been working in music for 17 years.

“Sometimes I wonder within my 17 years if people think that I’m calculated when I disappear for years,” she mused, noting that her son is 11 years old and when her music started to take off, “overnight it was like I was famous, it was the strangest most surreal experience of my life still, to this day; I fell pregnant, and many that would be, and it was, considered career suicide for me. However, always one to go against the grain, it was there and then that I chose to reject the scarcity of success and the idea that you have to be constantly relevant to be successful. And that perhaps, just maybe, I could be a hit both on and off the stage — and you’ll never guess what, fucking got away with it.”

“All the sacrifices the women before me have made, it is because of them that I have every right to be the boss at home and the boss at work. So, thank you,” she added.

Adele also spoke about the importance of character to being a leader, saying, “talent can’t dictate how you move. Talent can’t decide how you treat people and doesn’t have a moral compass; talent cannot read a room,” and credited the women in her life for giving her a strong character.

“My mother, my aunties, my grandmothers, they are will strong, loud, boisterous, loyal and cutthroat women, like me. … They’re a force to be reckoned with and quite frankly, terrifying times, like me. But that was because they had to be, they had to learn the hard way what it is to be a woman, and so in turn they hardened.” She teased if she could thank a man at the event, acknowledging all that her longtime manager Jonathan Dickins has done for her — and jokingly thanked his mother instead.

“I stand here today as a testament to all of you, all of the women before me and beside me who broke down doors and left them open for us. I don’t have stories of how success was hard, because it wasn’t, and I know that’s rare, and I know I’m lucky, but that’s because of you. A lot of you had to claim your power, and you’ve given me mine,” Adele said, closing out jokingly, “I accept this leadership award as an invitation to carry on being myself” to laughs from the audience.

Also in attendance at the event were WIE honorees and notable names including Connie Britton, Jurnee Smollett, Kate Beckinsale, Lily Singh, Xochitl Gomez, Alexandra Shipp, Anna Konkle, Annie Gonzalez, Diane Warren, Gloria Calderón Kellett, Kathy Hilton and Lucy Hale.

The Women in Entertainment event was sponsored by Cadillac, Google, SAG-AFTRA, Best Buy, Gersh and Upneeq, and in partnership with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Los Angeles, Chapman University and Loyola Marymount University.