People Are Calling Out The Academy For “Unfair Time Allowances” After Adrien Brody Was Allowed To Go WAY Over The Limit, But Numerous Other Winners Were Abruptly Played Off Mid-Speech

Adrien won for his incredible performance as László Tóth in Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist; also nominated in the esteemed category were Timothée Chalamet for A Complete Unknown, Colman Domingo for Sing Sing, and Ralph Fiennes for Conclave.

Adrien previously won the Best Leading Actor Academy Award in 2003 for his role in The Pianist. He was 29 at the time, making him the youngest actor to receive the accolade.

Adrien’s acceptance speech has since caused quite a stir online, given that the actor went WAY over the allocated 45-second limit. In fact, he was interrupted part-way through his speech when the famous “wrap” music began playing — AKA a signal for the person speaking to finish and leave the stage.

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However, this didn’t stop him at all — instead of speeding up, he acknowledged the music directly and requested that it be turned off. “I’m wrapping up, please, please. I’m wrapping up; I will wrap up. Please turn the music off. I’ve done this before — thank you. It’s not my first rodeo,” he said as the music was paused.

You might assume that Adrien began to hurry up and finish after the wrap music played, right? Wrong. Despite promising to be “brief,” the actor continued to talk for over a minute, making his speech a total of around 5 minutes long. The wrap music even ended up being played a second time towards the end!

Several internet users have since expressed their anger at Adrien’s lengthy speech, especially given that other Oscar winners — including winners from movies like I’m Still Here, The Only Girl in the Orchestra, and Emilia Pérez — were played off by the music when they reached the time limit. “Was he trying to make his speech as long as the movie?” one person quipped, referring to The Brutalist’s 3-and-a-half-hour runtime. “It felt like they gave Adrien Brody so much time and it felt like they cut Daniel Blumberg off so fast? The time difference was insane,” said another, who also called out the Academy for giving “unfair time allowances.”

“Adrian’s speech was soooo uncomfortable and awkward,” another user wrote. “So rude. 'This isn’t my first rodeo?' Seriously that conductor deserves more respect. To treat another performer like that live on stage is so wrong.”

Someone else added, “Adrien Brodey with a 50 minute speech but every foreign person whose first language isn’t English and it takes them a little longer to speak got ushered off in .5 seconds” while others said that Adrien’s speech came off as “pretentious” and “pompous.” 

Several people suggested that while Adrien’s speech came off as “arrogant,” Timothée’s did the complete opposite; the latter actor got extremely candid about how much he wants success, outright stating on stage that he is “in pursuit of greatness” and wants to be “one of the greats.”

“hmm so i do not like how adrien brody was all ‘i’ve done this before’ lol. there is a huge difference between this speech and timothée’s SAG speech and this one was full of arrogance,” someone tweeted. “Adrien Brody saying ‘I’ve done this before shut the music off’…. but Timothee was getting slammed for saying he wanted to be one of the greats… hmmm…. Okay,” another user wrote.