‘Our ignorance and discomfort around disability and disfigurement:’ Sebastian Stan delivers powerful speech at the Golden Globes, but his disabled fellow actor was overlooked

The movie A Different Man highlights the condition neurofibromatosis, where non-cancerous tumors appear on a person’s body. While Sebastian Stan is the lead actor of the film, and just picked up an award for his performance at the Golden Globes, the real star of the show is Adam Pearson, who actually has neurofibromatosis.

It was Pearson, as well as director Aaron Schimberg, who Stan shouted out as he accepted the award. “I share this with you. Thank you for your trust,” he said before launching into a condemnation of ableism. “Our ignorance and discomfort around disability and disfigurement has to end now. We have to normalize it and continue to expose ourselves to it, and our children. Encourage acceptance. One way we can do that is by continuing to champion stories that are inclusive.”

After mentioning his other film of 2024, controversial Donald Trump biopic The Apprentice, Stan said, “These are tough subject matters, but these films are real and they are necessary. We can’t be afraid and look away.”

However, plenty of people on social media pointed out that despite the speech itself being good and necessary, Adam Pearson—the actually disabled person in the film—didn’t score a nomination himself. In fact, he wasn’t even there on Golden Globes night.

Pearson gave a shout-out to Stan’s win and acceptance speech on his X account, saying, “That’s my guy right there! Couldn’t be happier for him!” But he himself has said plenty about ableism in Hollywood, and that deserves to be highlighted too.

While promoting A Different Man to The Guardian in 2024, Pearson said that he never pursued acting in the past because, “I didn’t think disabled people were allowed in films, because I didn’t see any.” Then he pointed out the tiny, tiny amount of disabled people who have won acting Oscars. There’s a mere three at the moment: Harold Russell for The Best Years of Our Lives in 1947, Marlee Matlin for Children of a Lesser God in 1987, and Troy Kotsur for Coda in 2022.

Pearson first came to Hollywood’s attention after acting opposite Scarlett Johansson in 2013’s Under the Skin, and he used that fame to speak out about ableist bullying. In 2015 he did a documentary for BBC Three, The Ugly Face of Disability Hate Crime. “Disfigurement is so widely unrepresented in our media heavy culture it is little wonder people don’t know how to react to it,” he wrote in a guest blog for the BBC at the time.

Stan’s totally correct in that our ignorance and discomfort around disability and disfigurement has to end. But we also need to start nominating disabled people for awards and actually inviting them to things.