27-year-old British actress Emma Watson was given the MTV award for "Best actor in a film" for her character "Belle" in the live-action "Beauty and the Beast” whereas the award for "Best Actor in a TV Series" went to 13-year-old Millie Bobby Brown from Netflix's "Stranger Things."
The ceremony which took place this Sunday are considered a milestone since the Mtv Awards became the first mainstream film and television awards to have gender-neutral categories.
Emma Watson on receiving the award from Asia Kate Dillon
Emma Watson was ecstatic when she was announced as the winner and said that it was very meaningful for her to be receiving her award from 32-year-old Asia Kate Dillon who people famously know as the first openly non-binary actor to play an openly non-binary character on a major TV show.
Watson also credited Dillon for educating her about the issue in a very "inclusive, patient and loving way."
Watson beat Australian actor Hugh Jackman for his role in the movie "Logan" and Scottish actor James McAvoy for his role in the film "Split" among others in this category.
American actor Asia Kate Dillon is known for her acting in "Orange is the new black" and "Billions." Dillion is known to be very vocal about the whole gender identity issue since just a few months back there was a lot of confusion regarding which category she should be put in for the Emmy Awards (actor or actress). She wrote a letter to the Television Academy encouraging them to go for a gender-neutral category as well.
Emma Watson's acceptance speech
In her acceptance speech, Watson said that everyone would feel differently towards this Gender Neutral award however to her it means that acting is when a person puts themselves in the shoes of someone else, and therefore it does not have to put into two separate categories.
Just last month, the head of MTV Chris McCarthy made the news of introducing gender-neutral award categories public.
There was a total of seven gender-neutral categories with individual winners at the MTV awards ceremony which took the place of Sunday night, Taraji P. Henson took home the award for "Best Hero."
MTV overall removed its male and female acting categories and although this award ceremony received a lot of hype because there were so many gender-less categories however this was not the first time that MTV gave out gender-neutral awards as the ceremonies in 2006 and 2007 also had gender-less awards in some categories.
