- Welcome to your intervention, everyone.
(audience laughs)
Surprise.
Does anyone have a question?
- [Interviewer] I do, hi Patricia.
Right over to your left, left.
Hi, we're here with Spectrum News.
When we had a chance to talk to you on the carpet,
you had a really meaningful conversation with me
about your advocacy for climate change
and keeping the planet clean for our children.
In your acceptance you talked about trans rights as well.
You seem to use your platform for causes,
to advocate for causes that you're passionate about.
Can you talk to us about you using your celebrity
to shine light on these important issues?
- I really feel like it's not so much my advocacy
for climate change
as much as it is those kids who blew my mind,
who showed up, millions of them across the world,
to say, "We want a world to live in,
"we want a future to believe in."
And they're right, and we need to give that to them.
And it's very shameful I think for us as adults
that we haven't provided that for them.
As far as my speech tonight,
I'm having a wonderful time in my career,
I never saw it coming.
I'm 51 years old, I'm getting the greatest, you know,
roles of my life, working with the greatest people.
But also because I've been working so much
I haven't completely processed my sister Alexis' death.
And I think sometimes we like, as an actor or anybody,
you try to act like everything's fine.
But the truth is for days I've been talking to my family
about, wow, I'm really starting to feel this heavy grief,
I feel like I'm just starting to process this.
So to be there tonight would be
inauthentic, really, to not talk about my whole self
and where I am, where my heart is, where my thoughts are.
I really miss my sister
and I really wanna help create a world where, you know.
Trans women of color live on the lowest amount
of any group of people in America,
under $10,000 a year, in deep poverty.
Trans people in America have a life expectancy of 35 years.
So that's not acceptable.
And still jokes are common
and we don't see people getting employed everywhere,
you don't see them anywhere you're going to buy things.
So we need to really change this,
and I think we could change it rapidly if we cared to.
And I care to.
And I wanna make the world a better place
for all the kids today.
- Thank you. - Patricia.
Patricia.
- Hi, hello, hi, good to see you, hi.
- [Interviewer] Look, your activism can't surprise anybody.
You were brought out that way.
- Yeah.
- [Interviewer] When you say these are
the greatest roles of your life,
a lot of us think the stuff you did before was sensational.
And these roles are women very different from you
and must challenge you in a different way.
But do you look back on that younger you
that we also all admired and not appreciated,
do you appreciate what you did?
- Of course I do.
And I think with youth and falling in love
and sexuality of youth,
that's a wonderfully story too
and I think it has a place there
and I'm grateful that I was hired at that time
and that I worked with amazing filmmakers
and I've had this opportunity throughout my career.
But the reality is in this business in general,
in your 50s, as a woman, you were put out to pasture.
So I was kind of preparing for the time to come
when I was going to be put out to pasture by this business,
or I had to look like some, you know,
trying to look like a 20-year-old.
So I'm very glad that I'm actually alive in a time where
there are so many interesting projects and roles.
I don't think it was that common.
It was more common in television for women,
but now it seems to be changing.
(graphic whooshes)