The 76th Annual Golden Globe Awards were held on Sunday, January 6th this year at The Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California. Thanks to movies like Black Panther and Crazy Rich Asians, the award show features a lot of diversity. The awards this year also took on a much lighter tone after last year’s with the #MeToo and Times Up movement dominating the scene. Instead of wearing black in support of the movements, this year celebrities wore black-and-white bracelets that read “Times Up x2.”
Hosts Sandra Oh and Andy Samberg opened up the show by praising many of the actors and actresses in the audience. Oh got to a point where she became emotional and expressed how proud she was to see more representation in the film and television industry.
She was referring to the many films this year that featured people of color, and even her role as a host made history because she is the first Asian woman to appear in front of a major American awards show. Oh told the audience that she took the job because she “wanted to…look out into [the] audience and witness [the] moment of change.” Not only was Oh the host, but she made history again by winning the award for Best Actress in a TV Drama, becoming the first actress of Asian descent in 39 years to win the Globe for that category. It is also worth mentioning that Oh is the first woman of Asian descent to win multiple Golden Globes. Her first Globe she won was for her role as Cristina Yang on Grey’s Anatomy in 2006.
The diversity was not just in the nominations, but in the winners as well. Several of the winners chosen by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (the group behind the awards) were performers of color, including Rami Malek who is an Egyptian-American who won Best Actor in a Drama Movie. In addition, “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” won for Best Animated Movie, which features a version of the superhero as an Afro-Latino teenager. Not to forget, “Green Book,” a movie about the relationship between an African-American pianist and his Italian-American driver, won Best Comedy.
One of the biggest surprises of the night was when Glenn Close won the award for Best Actress in a Drama for her part in “The Wife.” Many people were expecting Lady Gaga to win for her role in “A Star Is Born.” The movie also had a chance to win against “Bohemian Rhapsody” for Best Drama, but unfortunately lost. Many fans on social media were outraged to hear that Gaga’s movie with Bradley Cooper only took home one award for Best Song.
Other winners included the African-American actor Mahershala Ali for his acting in “Green Book,” and the openly-gay Ben Whishaw, who received his Globe for acting in the Amazon mini-series “A Very British Scandal.” Director Alfonso Cuarón won the Foreign Film prize for “Roma,” a subtitled black-and-white tribute to life in Mexico City in the 1970s. Also, it is noted that no film won an award more than another one. A number of movies like “Mary Poppins Returns,” “BlacKkKlansman,” “Black Panther,” and “Boy Erased” went home empty-handed despite the multiple nominations they each received.
Another highlight of the night was when Jeff Bridges was awarded the Cecil B. DeMille Award for his lifetime achievement in film, and when Carol Burnett accepted a new award named after herself, for her career achievement in television. Overall, the awards were an entertaining event that received attention for the notable amount of diversity it exhibited.
