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Da’Vine Joy Randolph on winning the Oscar while being herself
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Da’Vine Joy Randolph is still basking in the glory of the aftermath of her Oscar win for best supporting actress in “The Holdovers” on Sunday at the 96th annual Academy Awards.
Less than 24 hours after her speech captivated millions worldwide, Randolph told “CBS Mornings” co-host Gayle King that her win signified a “moment of completion,” and described a special presentation by past winners, including her long-time friend Lupita Nyong’o, as “soul-stirring.”
During the ceremony, Nyong’o said Randolph’s performance “is tribute to those who have helped others heal in spite of their own pain. It’s also a tribute to your grandmother, whose glasses you wore in the film. What an honor to see the world through her eyes and yours.” Randolph, said she was stunned by Nyong’o’s speech about her.
“I talked to Lupita an hour, two hours prior. We’ve been talking specifically, frequently all throughout the week. She never said nothing about it. She got me a massage yesterday, never said anything. I was like what is what’s going on? It was the best surprise,” said Randolph, who also attended Yale at the same time as Nyong’o.
Randolph said she felt a sense of “release and a relief” when she won, and reflected on her whirlwind award season.
“It was a campaign for people to see a brown and Black body go through this process, having conversations and speeches and interviews in which I can speak about Black women and the Black experience from a place dignity, pride and class,” she said. “This has been such a monumental journey.”
Randolph said her journey to her Academy Award win also marked one of self-discovery. During her acceptance speech she said, “I’ve always wanted to be different, now I realize I just need to be myself.”
She explained that revelation to King saying, “I think prior, I thought, ‘Well, if only I looked like this, or if only I acted like that,’ meaning like my spirit, my personality,” she said. ‘”If only I carried myself this way,’ looking at other people’s success and other things that got them to places where I may have thought I wanted to have and be at. Through this process, I’ve come to know, and really through this awards season, I’ve come to know, you’re enough. It’s you.”
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Moderate Masoud Pezeshkian wins Iran’s presidential runoff election
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Reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian won Iran’s runoff presidential election Saturday, besting hard-liner Saeed Jalili by promising to reach out to the West and ease enforcement on the country’s mandatory headscarf law after years of sanctions and protests squeezing the Islamic Republic.
Pezeshkian promised no radical changes to Iran’s Shiite theocracy in his campaign and long has held Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as the final arbiter of all matters of state in the country. But even Pezeshkian’s modest aims will be challenged by an Iranian government still largely held by hard-liners, the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, and Western fears over Tehran enriching uranium to near-weapons-grade levels.
A vote count offered by authorities put Pezeshkian as the winner with 16.3 million votes to Jalili’s 13.5 million in Friday’s election.
Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu via Getty Images
Supporters of Pezeshkian, a heart surgeon and longtime lawmaker, entered the streets of Tehran and other cities before dawn to celebrate as his lead grew over Jalili, a hard-line former nuclear negotiator.
But Pezeshkian’s win still sees Iran at a delicate moment, with tensions high in the Mideast over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, Iran’s advancing nuclear program, and a looming U.S. election that could put any chance of a detente between Tehran and Washington at risk.
The first round of voting June 28 saw the lowest turnout in the history of the Islamic Republic since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Iranian officials have long pointed to turnout as a sign of support for the country’s Shiite theocracy, which has been under strain after years of sanctions crushing Iran’s economy, mass demonstrations and intense crackdowns on all dissent.
Government officials up to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei predicted a higher participation rate as voting got underway, with state television airing images of modest lines at some polling centers across the country.
However, online videos purported to show some polls empty while a survey of several dozen sites in the capital, Tehran, saw light traffic amid a heavy security presence on the streets.
The election came amid heightened regional tensions. In April, Iran launched its first-ever direct attack on Israel over the war in Gaza, while militia groups that Tehran arms in the region — such as the Lebanese Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi rebels — are engaged in the fighting and have escalated their attacks.
Iran is also enriching uranium at near weapons-grade levels and maintains a stockpile large enough to build several nuclear weapons, should it choose to do so. And while Khamenei remains the final decision-maker on matters of state, whichever man ends up winning the presidency could bend the country’s foreign policy toward either confrontation or collaboration with the West.
The campaign also repeatedly touched on what would happen if former President Donald Trump, who unilaterally withdrew America from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, won the November election. Iran has held indirect talks with President Joe Biden’s administration, though there’s been no clear movement back toward constraining Tehran’s nuclear program for the lifting of economic sanctions.
More than 61 million Iranians over the age of 18 were eligible to vote, with about 18 million of them between 18 and 30. Voting was to end at 6 p.m. but was extended until midnight to boost participation.
The late President Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a May helicopter crash, was seen as a protégé of Khamenei and a potential successor as supreme leader.
Still, many knew him for his involvement in the mass executions that Iran conducted in 1988, and for his role in the bloody crackdowns on dissent that followed protests over the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini, a young woman detained by police over allegedly improperly wearing the mandatory headscarf, or hijab.
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Biden set for pivotal 24 hours with primetime interview
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