Andrew Garfield reacts to being nominated for a SAG Award in touching interview

14 January 2022, 15:57

Andrew Garfield fights back tears as he talks about the loss of his mother

By Jazmin Duribe

"We don't often talk as openly or honestly about our grief and our losses."

Andrew Garfield had a very moving and emotional response to being nominated for a SAG Award.

The Spider-Man actor received a nomination for his role as playwright Jonathan Larson in Lin-Manuel Miranda-directed film Tick, Tick... Boom. The biographical musical centres on the life of Jonathan, who wrote hit Broadway production Rent, before he tragically died aged 35 on the day of Rent's first Off-Broadway preview performance.

Andrew has been nominated for Outstanding Leading Actor in a Motion Picture at this year's SAG Awards, which will be held on February 28. It's the second time Andrew has been nominated in the category (he was nominated Hacksaw Ridge in 2017) but this time he appears to be particularly touched by it.

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In an interview with E! News on Wednesday (Jan 12), Andrew opened up about how much his award nomination meant to him. He said: "This is the SAG Awards honouring him and his life and what he stood for. How he lived his devotion to the art of theatre and storytelling.

"What he sang about was his artist community, who were all at that time going through this terrible AIDS epidemic and the terrible injustice of the Reagan administration and the tragedy that was befalling this community of artists in New York City and around the world."

He added: "He was a generous, advocate [and] revolutionary artist, so I feel like this nomination is really just another another way of giving Jon more life. And I find more and more breath to sing more of his song while he can't and I find that deeply moving."

While Tick, Tick...Boom! is about Jonathan's life and hunger for success, there's also themes of grief and loss too. "One of the big experiences that Jonathan goes through in this film is an awareness and a kind of acceptance of loss," Andrew explained.

"And, you know, awareness that life is finite, that life is short. And it's so painful to accept that – it's so much easier to try to live under the illusion that we're all gonna live forever. But I think only when you accept that and when you're met with that in a visceral way, does life starts to really become meaningful in a deeper way."

Andrew was able to draw upon his own experiences of grief, citing the passing of his mother Lynn from pancreatic cancer in 2019, shortly before Tick, Tick... Boom! began production.

He continued: "We don't often talk as openly or honestly about our grief and our losses. It's been labeled as not as attractive as talking about our successes and joy, you know? But there's so much joy in talking about my mother. There's so much joy in sharing a community of consolation."