'Moonlight's' Youngest Stars Return To Middle School From Oscars
After experiencing a monumental Oscars weekend, Moonlight actors Alex Hibbert and Jaden Piner have gotten back to work as middle school students.
Hibbert and Piner, who play the youngest Chiron and Chiron's childhood best friend Kevin, respectively, returned to their 7th grade class at Norland Middle School in Miami, earlier this week.
"It was a different feel," Piner explained to NBC 6, in regards to being back at school. "Everybody was saying congratulations and everything and it felt wonderful."
The actors had no idea that they were auditioning for Moonlight, with Hibbert saying "...we got the audition from school so we thought it was gonna be like a short film or something and just to see it go and be something as big as this is just amazing."
Hibbert also spoke about the Best Picture mix up that occurred during the Oscars between Moonlight and La La Land.
"When they first was like, Moonlight got it, we were like, yeah, nice joke, but they were like serious, you guys got it, and all I remember, I jumped over this guy and he was screaming, and I was like sorry, I just won an award," Hibbert said.
Earlier this week Moonlight director Barry Jenkins revealed what he would have said for his acceptance speech at the Oscars, which he did not get the chance to say because of the snafu.
"Tarell [Alvin McCraney] and I are Chiron. We are that boy," Jenkins wrote. "And when you watch Moonlight, you don't assume a boy who grew up how and where we did would grow up and make a piece of art that wins an Academy Award. I've said that a lot, and what I've had to admit is that I placed those limitations on myself, I denied myself that dream. Not you, not anyone else — me. And so, to anyone watching this who sees themselves in us, let this be a symbol, a reflection that leads you to love yourself. Because doing so may be the difference between dreaming at all and, somehow through the Academy's grace, realizing dreams you never allowed yourself to have. Much love."
