Last summer’s Barbenheimer phenomenon continued into the Golden Globes on Sunday night, with Barbie taking home best cinematic achievement and Oppenheimer best drama, while Yorgos Lanthimos’s absurdist film Poor Things won for best comedy at the first major awards show of the year.
Critical darlings Succession, The Bear and Beef cleaned up in the TV awards, while international features Anatomy of a Fall and The Boy and the Heron picked up additional film wins.
The 81st annual Golden Globes were a breezy return to form after a February 2021 investigation by the Los Angeles Times found that the Globes-governing Hollywood Foreign Press Association had no Black members and numerous corruption issues.
The three-hour ceremony at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles marked the first ceremony since the Hollywood Foreign Press Association was disbanded, sold to a private equity firm and Dick Clark Productions, and reformed with a diverse body of 300 international members representing 76 countries.
Filipino-American comedian Jo Koy, a last-minute pick for host announced just two weeks before the ceremony, stuck to his promise for an uncontroversial ceremony. Unlike Jerrod Carmichael’s relatively edgy hosting work last year, Koy avoided mention of politics and opted for easy swings at the nominees – among them, soon-to-be father again Robert DeNiro (“how’d you get her pregnant at 80? CGI?”), Oppenheimer (“it needed another hour”) and Barbie (“the key moment in Barbie is when she goes from perfect beauty to bad breath, cellulite and flat feet – or what casting directors call ‘character actor’”).
Not all the bits went down well, prompting the 52-year-old to take a defensive stance – “I got the gig 10 days ago, you want a perfect monologue? Are you kidding me?” he remarked after one particularly tepid response. Another rib at Taylor Swift – “the big difference between the Golden Globes and the NFL? At the Golden Globes, we have fewer camera shots of Taylor Swift” – prompted the singer to take an unsmiling drink of wine.
Nominated for her blockbuster concert film, Swift lost the inaugural award for cinematic and box office achievement to Barbie, the first female-directed movie to make over $1bn at the box office. “We would like to dedicate this to every single person on the planet who dressed up and went to the greatest place on earth: the movie theatre,” said star Margot Robbie while accepting the award. The night’s other new award, best stand-up comedy performance on TV, went to British comedian Ricky Gervais for his special Armageddon.
Though defeated in the best director and screenplay races, Barbie, the most nominated of the evening with nine nods, also won best original song for Billie Eilish and her brother/producer Finneas’s somber hit What Was I Made For? Poor Things scored an upset with best comedy, as well as best actress for Emma Stone’s bizarro coming of age as Bella Baxter.
Oppenheimer collected the most awards of the night with five, including best drama, best actor for Cillian Murphy, best score for Ludwig Göransson and best supporting actor for Robert Downey Jr. Best director Christopher Nolan acknowledged the last time he accepted a Golden Globe, on behalf of the late Heath Ledger for The Dark Knight. “I thought it would be simpler accepting for myself,” he said, “but I can only accept this on behalf of people. As directors, we bring people together and we try to get them to give their best.”
Oppenheimer’s main rival for drama, Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, scored one award for Lily Gladstone as best actress. Gladstone, the first Indigenous actor to be nominated, let alone win, in the category, began her acceptance speech in the Blackfeet language. “I’m so grateful that I can speak even a little bit of my language,” she said, noting how Indigenous actors used to have their English lines played backwards as Native speech.
“This is for every little rez kid, every little urban kid, every little Native kid out there who has a dream, who is seeing themselves represented by ourselves, in our words,” she added.
Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers also collected wins for best comedy actor Paul Giamatti and supporting actress Da’vine Joy Randolph.
Perhaps owing to the new and improved Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s global membership, there were a number of wins for international features, including a surprise victory for French film Anatomy of a Fall’s Justine Triet and Arthur Harari for best screenplay over frontrunners Barbie, Killers of the Flower Moon and Oppenheimer, as well as best non-English language film. The Boy and the Heron, Japanese film-maker Hayao Miyazaki’s supposedly final film, won for best animated feature.
On the TV side, the final season of HBO mega-hit Succession dominated the evening with four awards, including Matthew Macfadyen for best supporting actor – “I just adored every second playing the weird and wonderful human grease stain that is Tom Wambsgans,” he said, much to the delight of his many nominated co-stars, including best drama actress winner Sarah Snook (aka Shiv Roy). Kieran Culkin, aka Roman Roy, took home the best actor trophy over costars Brian Cox and Jeremy Strong. “This isn’t mine, this is one for the team,” he said, a sentiment echoed by creator Jesse Armstrong, accepting for best drama series: “It’s been said, but it’s a team effort, this show.”
FX’s The Bear, meanwhile, took over the TV comedy awards, despite not really being a comedy – best comedy series, best actor Jeremy Allen White and best actress for Ayo Edebiri, who shouted out “all of my agents and managers’ assistants, all of you who answer my emails. You guys are real ones.”
Netflix’s revenge drama Beef cleaned up the awards for limited or anthology series, with wins for stars Ali Wong and Steven Yeun, as well as best limited series. Wong, the first Asian-American nominee or winner in the category, dedicated her award to ex-husband Justin Hakuta, the father of her children who “allowed me to be a working mother”, while Yeun acknowledged that he’s “just a recipient of a long line of passion and love and protection and good will”.
Perennial TV award favorite The Crown was shut out, other than a nod for Elizabeth Debicki as best supporting actress in a TV series for her embodiment of Princess Diana.
And Oprah, the talk show host and producer of musical/comedy nominee The Color Purple, presented the final award of the evening, best drama, to Emma Thomas, the film’s producer and Nolan’s wife. “This is just the smallest portion of the many people who made the film what it is,” she said.
“What’s so clear is that what we do is collaboration,” she added, “and I find that to be completely magical.”
