Lesbian icon Jessica Gunning blown away by SAG Award win for Baby Reindeer

Jessica Gunning won her first ever Screen Actors’ Guild (SAG) Award yesterday (February 23) and she was incredibly excited by the accolade, after beating stiff competition from the likes of Kathy Bates.

The actress was given the award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Movie or Limited Series for playing Martha in Netflix series Baby Reindeer.

Gunning was nominated alongside Kathy Bates (The Great Lillian Hall), Cate Blanchett (Disclaimer), Jodie Foster (True Detective: Night Country), Lily Gladstone (Under The Bridge), and Cristin Milioti (The Penguin).

As she accepted the award, she said: “Wow, thank you so much. Wow. I feel like such a lucky bunny to even be in this room, let alone be nominated or up here, honestly.”

“When I first started acting, I had an office job alongside acting for about eight years. It’s a very geeky thing to admit but in the mornings I used to go into work and look at a PowerPoint presentation, it was like a positive thinking vision board of all the things that I wanted to do and the people I wanted to meet or work with.”

Gunning also mentioned that three of her fellow nominees (Blanchett, Foster, and Bates) were also “on that vision board” as inspiration, and it appears life has come full-circle as they were nominated alongside Gunning for the SAG Award.

She also highlighted how Gladstone and Milioti “gave performances that absolutely knocked [her] socks off” and said it meant a lot to her to be nominated alongside such a talented group of women.

The actress concluded her speech by thanking her cast mates on Baby Reindeer, including the show’s creator and star Richard Gadd.

“Thank you to Richard Gadd for making my dreams come true, I will never ever forget Baby Reindeer or playing the part of Martha. Honestly, genuinely, this means the world to me so thank you so much,” Gunning said.

This is not Gunning’s first award for Baby Reindeer, winning an Emmy, a Golden Globe, a Critics’ Choice Award, and a Satellite Award for her portrayal of Martha.

She has previously discussed how she worked for 17 years in the UK as an actor before making it big with Baby Reindeer.

Gunning came out as LGBTQ+ in June 2024, and revealed the moment she “should’ve known she’s gay”. 

In a question-and-answer session with fans of the 2014 film Pride, set during the miners’ strikes in the 80s, she shared how the film shaped her identity. “I realised I actually hadn’t seen the film since coming out, so I said I would love to be there and watch it,” she shared.

“It was really emosh. I have always obviously been a big, old gay but it took me 36 years to realise it. As I was watching me on the screen, I was like: ‘I am gay there’. I should have known in hindsight because I cried so much during that film, all the time, even in my audition.”

““If I knew when I was doing Pride that I would be here, 10 years on, feeling the most myself I have ever felt, and the most welcome in a room like this, I would have been very proud indeed,” she continued.

The 2025 SAG Awards ceremony was hosted by Frozen star Kristen Bell and streamed live on Netflix.

The ceremony is organised by the Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) and bills itself as the ‘only televised awards ceremony to exclusively honor actors.’