SAG Awards 2018: Some of the powerful moments witnessed off-camera

Here's a look at a few of the best moments that happened backstage and off-camera at this year's awards show

Sterling K. Brown accepts the Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series award for This Is Us during the 24th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards show. AFP

While actors are accustomed to being on camera, not every starry moment at the Screen Actors Guild Awards makes the screen. Here's a look at some of the celebrity exchanges that took place off-camera:

An emotional victory

First, Sterling K. Brown was jumping for joy. Then he couldn't stop crying.

Brown was a double winner at the Screen Actors Guild Awards Saturday, taking acting honours for his performance in This is Us and sharing in the show's ensemble award.

Brown jumped up and down in the Shrine Auditorium ballroom when the NBC drama was announced as the ensemble winner, but by the time he came offstage after co-star Milo Ventimiglia's acceptance speech, he was in tears.

Brown dabbed at his eyes with a tissue as his cast mates congratulated each other off-camera. At times he appeared to be sobbing.

Meanwhile, co-star Chrissy Metz was singing a little ditty and dancing around.

"We did it guys!" she said. "This is exciting! I'm excited!"

The cast piled into an adjacent room where they claimed their actor statuettes, where 10-year-old Faithe Herman remarked, "These weigh like 3,000 pounds."

When Mandy Moore spotted Brown with his two trophies, she said, "You could do bicep curls."

Brown said backstage that he was especially moved by the cast award.

"My cast has been so generous in celebrating me and this wonderful journey that I've been on, and tonight we get a chance to celebrate each other," he said. "So this is a dream … We were all waiting for them to say Handmaid's Tale, but then they called our network television drama! The fact that we get a chance to come, and we won? This is a very special night."

Moore added backstage that the vast cast is rarely on set together at once.

"We're never in one room," she said. "That's what makes this all so much more special and celebratory."

Sympathy for Tonya

Allison Janney revealed her secret for playing Tonya Harding's abusive mother in I, Tonya.

After winning the Screen Actors Guild award for her performance in the film, the actress said that when she had to say cruel things to Harding's character, Janney would pretend she was saying them to herself.

"We all know our inner critics, our inner voices where we're the meanest to ourselves, and I would sometimes imagine me talking to myself when I had to say something to (co-star) Margot (Robbie)," Janney said.

A former figure skater herself, Janney said she related to LaVona Golden as she recalled her own parents waking up early to take her to the skating rink before school.

"The abuse part was not easy to understand ever," Janney said, "but to see how normal it was in her life, that was just the way they reacted with each other."

The actress said being a part of I, Tonya made her sympathise with Harding in a way she hadn't before.

"I feel she did get a raw deal," Janney said.

"I just have a greater empathy for her, growing up with a mother like that … and in the figure skating community, not being embraced for who she was and not fitting in. I have real empathy for that," she continued. "I think that's why it resonates right now is because of those themes of class: She was poor and they felt like she didn't fit in. She didn't represent the refined world of figure skating. I feel a lot for her, much more than I did so when that story first broke."

Seat-fillers and pizza

Inside the Shrine Auditorium, where the SAG Awards are presented, a line of seat-fillers stood against a black curtain, waiting for their chance to sit with the stars.

One woman carried a copy of Vanity Fair to pass the time while she awaited her opportunity.

The tables of TV and movie casts were so packed into the ballroom, seat-fillers and waiters had to shimmy sideways to get through the throng.

While commercials play during the telecast, dinner music plays in the ballroom. That's when the actors squeezed around to mingle. Frances McDormand hugged a whole group of people, Lupita Nyong'o posed for a selfie and Olivia Munn chatted to Veep star Tony Hale.

And mysteriously, a dolly loaded up with about 30 pizzas passed through the ballroom and out into the hallway, leaving guests curious as to their destination.

Love for Julia

Julia Louis-Dreyfus was on the minds of the cast of Veep after their win for ensemble in a comedy series.

Timothy Simons said Louis-Dreyfus has been in good spirits during her fight with cancer. "She's incredible. She's uniquely able to combat something like this."

Tony Hale said she couldn't be more generous as a co-worker.

"She sets the tone and she has just set a tone for everybody where we're all part of a team," he said. "Nobody's walking on eggshells … She has no arrogance, no entitlement."

She's a really good cook, too, he said, especially key lime pie and chocolate chip cookies.

"We miss her greatly," he said. "We wish she were here."

Her cast mates said she couldn't be at the awards because she was doing a play in New York.

Party time

At the after party of the SAG Awards, Robert De Niro held court on a couch in the centre of the room and looked deep in conversation as machines billowed smoke around him and lights danced from the ceiling.

Other stars treated the couches more like a dance floor. Allison Williams started grooving to The Weekend's I Feel It, as her Get Out co-stars mingled. Mary J. Blige moved to No Church in the Wild by Kanye West and Jay-Z as she munched on a crab leg.

The cast from Orange is the New Black mixed with the mostly female cast of GLOW, spinning each other to Tina Turner's What's Love Got To Do With It and Michael Jackson's Rock With You, as they mouthed the words.

Ray Romano heartily shook Marc Maron's hand while comedian Sarah Silverman was seen chatting with Kenneth Parcell of 30 Rock.

Meanwhile Alison Brie stood shoulder-to-shoulder with husband Dave Franco, dancing and snacking the night away.

Yael Stone, who is pregnant, was perhaps enjoying the party a little less than her Orange is the New Black co-stars. She asked nearby strangers where the exit was, and was followed out by Taylor Schilling and Natasha Lyonne after they were overheard laughing at an inside joke.

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