Ariana DeBose Sweetly Honors Rita Moreno After Winning Best Supporting Actress at 2022 Critics Choice Awards

Ariana DeBose
Eamonn M. McCormack/Getty Images for Critics Choice Association

The actress took home the award on Sunday, hours after winning a BAFTA for the same role.

Ariana DeBose has won Best Supporting Actress at the 202 Critics Choice Awards for her role in West Side Story.

The actress was blown away as she accepted the award from The Savoy Hotel in London, just hours after earning a BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actress for the same role.

DeBose stunned in a goldenrod yellow strapless column gown from Carolina Herrera as she thanked fans and critics for their support.

"Critics, you matter, and I am so, so, so grateful for your support of West Side Story," DeBose shared. "There were so many people who questions whether or not this film should be reimagined, and you rallied around us, you loved on us, every single one of us, and I am very, very grateful for that."

"To my fellow nominees, you are also esteemed and glorious and I love you so much! You inspire me, and especially one fellow nominee, the great Rita Moreno," she shared, addressing the Oscar winner who was nominated in the same category as DeBose. "Seriously, you made space for me to thrive beside you. I am not in front of you, I am not behind you, I am beside you, and that is the greatest gift you could have ever given me."

DeBose's win comes on the heels of bringing home hardware in the same category at the 2022 Screen Actors Guild Awards, where she called Steven Spielberg's iteration a great cinematic experience, and thanked him in her speech. She also scored a Golden Globe win.

The So You Think You Can Dance alum recalled to ET the moment Spielberg offered her the role.

"I was good getting to do the job! Like, I never in a million years thought Steven Spielberg was going to call me to offer me a gig," she recalled. "I was in a nail salon with foils. It was a thing. I didn't think that was going to happen, and I certainly didn't think I was ever going to play Anita in this way. And to have been able to do that, have the work and received it, I don't know, I really am overwhelmed by it. I got way more than I expected that I ever would, and that is a gift."

Check out the full list of 2022 Critics Choice Awards winners here!

RELATED CONTENT: