Moonlight won big at this year’s MTV Movie Awards and one of the movie’s scenes that pulled in a piece of hardware was Jharrel Jerome and Ashton Sanders’s big screen lip-lock.

It was so steamy, it won them the annual “Best Kiss” award, however, when the pair went on stage to accept their trophy, they didn’t abide by tradition and reenact the kiss. 

The “why?” was brought up with Jerome as TMZ was able to catch up with him at LAX on Monday (May 8). He says that reenacting it was unnecessary and the movie scene was too important for it to be repeated.

“We’re actors, we’re artists,” he explained. “We dive into characters that are not ourselves, so when we’re in real life and we’re being ourselves, wearing our own clothes we are in our characters. Being on that stage, it was about that moment and it wasn’t about trying to make fun of. He kiss was so important, it didn’t need repeated.”

Jharrel Jerome also detailed why their victory was a big win for LGBT issues, as they won by a majority vote.

“It feels good to know that we won off of user votes,” he said. “We won off of people voting, so it’s cool to see as a country we can come together and make a wave in the right direction.”

It isn’t unprecedented that actors who portrayed couples in movies have passed on kissing while accepting the award. Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal won the award in 2006 for Brokeback Mountain, however Gyllenhaal accepted the award alone. Kristen Stewart and Rob Pattinson also skipped on smooching for Twilight four years ago.

Check out TMZ’s short interview with Jharrel Jerome below.