Golden Globes 2021: 15 Best, Worst, and Most WTF Moments

It’s been six years since SNL alums/BFFs Tina Fey and Amy Poehler hosted the Globes together — and in our opinion, that’s six years too long. The pair’s chemistry is so seamless (and the production design here so clever) that you’d be forgiven for thinking they were standing beside each other onstage instead of 2,500 miles apart. (At one point, Fey appeared to reach her hand across time and space to stroke Poehler’s hair.) With perfect timing, they took a generous bite out of the HFPA (“A couple of them might be ghosts, and it’s rumored that the German member is just a sausage that somebody drew a little face on,” Fey quipped); called out bewildering nominees like The Prom and Emily in Paris; and delivered helpful guidelines to the growing debate over what separates television and movies (“TV is the one that I watch for five hours straight, but a movie is the one that I don’t turn on because it’s two hours,” Poehler explained). It’s a tightrope to walk between genial mockery and disdain, but Fey and Poehler pulled it off with aplomb. JS

By now, there’s barely a person alive who hasn’t experienced the standard glitches that come with a large video meeting — awkward pauses, weird camera angles, “you’re on mute” — but we expected a little more from a production made by people who, well, make big productions for a living. Out of the gate, the Globes stumbled as it cut to the first winner of the night, Daniel Kaluuya for best supporting actor in a motion-picture drama, and we heard… nothing. Luckily, the tech was sorted quickly enough for us to hear the Judas and the Black Messiah star exclaiming “You’re doing me dirty!” with a laugh, before going on to give an excited and graceful speech honoring his character, the slain Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton. “I hope generations after this can see how brilliantly he fought, how brilliantly he spoke, and how brilliantly he loved,” he said. “There’s a lot of information about how he died, but I hope people will learn about how incredibly he lived.” MF

At the 2020 Globes, The Crown was muscled out of the way by Succession, but last night, it came roaring back to take the title of television’s best drama. And why not? Season Four brought the story of the royal family into the modern era by introducing the doomed, tabloid-fodder romance of Prince Charles and Princess Diana. Newcomer Emma Corrin nabbed a surprise best actress win for her emotionally volatile turn as the young Lady Di (even beating out her TV mother-in-law, the great Olivia Colman), while her counterpart, Josh O’Connor, deservedly took home the best actor trophy for his alternately petulant and sympathetic Charles. Gillian Anderson also won best supporting actress for her portrayal of that stiffest-upper-lipped prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. In real life, it was a rough year for Queen Elizabeth and her brood, what with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle quitting royal duties for the laid-back So-Cal life. Luckily, The Crown was around to remind them — in the juiciest, most binge-worthy fashion — things could be much worse. MF

Schitt’s Creek didn’t clean up at the Globes as thoroughly as it did at the Emmys last fall, but leave it to comedy goddess Catherine O’Hara to make her acceptance speech for best actress as anarchic as possible. Dressed in a bold, Moira Rose-esque blazer, O’Hara attempted a bizarre bit in which her husband, production designer Bo Welch, played a tinny recording of applause over his iPhone while she shouted over it. It seemed like a mistake at first; but less than a minute later, Welch cued up exit music as O’Hara began to rush through her speech, ending by singing, “I hope it won’t take you six years to realize your greatest asset is having each other to looooove!” The gimmick fell flat, but if the age of Zoom inevitably leads us to this kind of technical Inception moment, there’s no better companion than O’Hara to go down the rabbit hole with. JS

It was a night to pay respects to the king, as Chadwick Boseman was honored posthumously as the best actor in a motion-picture drama for the role of bombastic trumpeter Levee in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. There wasn’t a dry eye on the Zoom as his widow, Taylor Simone Ledward, accepted on his behalf, trying to channel her husband: “He would say something inspiring, something that would amplify that little voice that tells you you can, that tells you to keep going.” Earlier in the show, a pre-taped segment with TikTok star LaRon Hines had primed the tear ducts. As he quizzed schoolkids on their film and TV knowledge, their answers were all comically off base, except to one question: “Who is Chadwick Boseman?” Every time came the enthusiastic answer: “Black Panther!” Wakanda forever. MF

In his acceptance speech for best actor in a motion-picture comedy, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm star Sacha Baron Cohen led by thanking the “all-white” 87-member voting body. He was hardly the first person of the night to call out the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for a lack of diversity both in its membership and its choices. The narrow range of nominees points to the increasing irrelevancy of the organization as a cultural arbiter in a time when Black Lives Matter and other inclusivity movements have been making tidal waves across the entertainment industry. (Notable shutouts this year included Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods, Issa Rae’s Insecure, and Michaela Coel’s devastatingly brilliant I May Destroy You.) The HFPA’s response: Trotting out three members of its leadership (albeit, yes, two women, one of South Asian descent) during the ceremony to promise “a more inclusive future” with a Weekend at Bernie‘s level of enthusiasm. We’ll believe it when we see it, guys. JS

One of the few pleasures of Zoom life is how it brings us into people’s homes and gives us an intimate look at their lives. So instead of winners standing at a microphone and telling their kids to go to bed, this year we got kids hogging the frame, exuberantly celebrating their parents’ success. Mark Ruffalo’s teenagers scampered back and forth behind him as he accepted his best actor in a TV drama award for I Know This Much Is True. Minari director Lee Issac Chung’s seven-year-old daughter clung to his neck squealing in delight when his film won. Nicole Kidman, Viola Davis, Kate Hudson, and Jason Bateman all piled their families onto their couches. And then there were the four-legged children, from Sarah Paulson’s pup to Emma Corrin’s cat to Jodie Foster’s dog Ziggy, whose sweet, calming vibes (as well as those of her wife, Alexandra Hedison) kept the Mauritanian star chill even as she picked up an award for best supporting actress in a motion-picture drama. MF

We took as much escapist pleasure in The Queen’s Gambit as any couch-bound citizen struggling through 2020. Scott Frank and Allan Scott’s chess drama is a thoroughly fun, well-crafted piece of prestige television. But it is utterly outmaneuvered by Small Axe, Steve McQueen’s five-part film anthology about London’s West Indian community in the late 1960s through the early Eighties. From “Lovers Rock,” an immersive journey through a reggae-inflected house party, to “Mangrove,” a civil rights courtroom drama that runs circles around best screenplay winner The Trial of the Chicago 7, Small Axe is a once-in-a-generation body of work. At least John Boyega picked up a best actor trophy for his turn as real-life figure Leroy Logan in “Red, White and Blue.” Still, the Globes’ tendency to honor the easily digestible over the groundbreaking continues to disappoint. JS

It’s ironic in the worst way that Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari, a movie profoundly concerned with the American Dream, doesn’t meet the HFPA’s strictures for what constitutes an American motion picture. Inspired by Chung’s own childhood, it follows the story of a Korean-American family carving out a life in 1980s Arkansas, and was one of 2020’s most humanistic movies. Yet this American film, made, we’ll say it again, by an American, was only eligible as a foreign language entry, since it’s delivered mostly in Korean. Nevertheless, it was gratifying to see Chung accept a trophy with his young daughter perched on his lap. “This one here, she’s the reason I made this film,” he said, adding that the language of Minari “goes deeper than any American language and any foreign language; it’s a language of the heart.” JS

Look, we’ve got no beef with Jason Sudeikis winning best actor in a TV musical or comedy. Ted Lasso is a sweet show that’s brought lots of people joy during the pandemic, and Sudeikis is a good guy who sports one heck of a mustache. But man did the actor take “bumbling victory speech” to new levels. Looking red-eyed and groggy, and dressed for the occasion in a pastel tie-dyed hoodie, a shocked Sudeikis stammered “that’s crazy” and “that’s nuts” several times, before butchering an analogy based on the Tolstoy short story “The Three Questions” that was meant to give credit to his fellow actors. The moment was awkward enough that nominee Don Cheadle started giving him a “let’s wrap it up” hand gesture (also awkward!). Now, it’s possible Sudeikis was in London, where Lasso films, which would explain a lot — it would’ve been the middle of the night for him. Maybe even… 4:20? MF

There are times when Aaron Sorkin’s tendency toward rapid-fire dialogue and earnest speechifying fits a project like a glove (The Social Network, A Few Good Men, The West Wing). Then there are times where it feels like every character he writes is lecturing the audience on Big Ideas. The Trial of the Chicago 7 is the latter, a cliché of a Sorkin movie where he affixes the plight of a group of Sixties antiwar activists onto our current political malaise. That he beat out work that was actually of-the-moment — Emerald Fennell’s sharp look at sexual assault in Promising Young Woman, Chloe Zhao’s sensitive fictionalization of itinerant workers’ struggles in Nomadland, Jack Fincher’s treatise on power in Mank — is a tragedy worth a Sorkin-penned, table-pounding rant. MF

Some years, the honorary awards seem like afterthoughts or obligations, but last night’s recipients couldn’t have been more worthy. Sitcom pioneer Norman Lear — who created iconic, progressive series from All in the Family to Good Times, The Jeffersons, One Day at a Time, and more — received the Carol Burnett Award honoring “outstanding contributions to television.” The ultimate class act, the 98-year-old creator thanked a long list of collaborators before turning the focus back on Burnett, graciously praising her body of work and signing off with her famous ear tug. Later, Jane Fonda received the Cecil B. DeMille Award. Ever the activist, she used her speech as a rousing call to action on diversity with all of the sincerity and authority the HFPA suits couldn’t muster. (And she looked unconscionably fabulous while doing it.) MF

Decked in a poufy red dress and combat boots à la Killing Eve’s Villanelle, Rosamund Pike came to slay last night — though when it came to her acceptance speech, she didn’t quite hit the mark. Snagging the award for best actress in a motion-picture comedy for her turn as a gleeful con artist who works the law to her advantage in I Care A Lot, Pike began: “Wow, I bet it looks like I care a lot. I do! I do! I care a lot!” She proceeded to salute Borat nominee Maria Bakalova for having a harder time of it than she did: “In my movie, I had to swim up from a sinking car; I think I would still rather do that than be in a room with Rudy Giuliani.” But then she ended with one of the night’s most grimace-inducing sound bytes, declaring, “I just have to thank America’s broken legal system for making it possible to make stories like this.” Rosamund, we know you’re from the U.K. and all, but no need to fire shots across the pond. JS

Next to Fey and Poehler, there aren’t two people on earth we’re happier to see at an awards show than Maya Rudolph and Kenan Thompson. The SNL vets hopped onto the stage in Los Angeles as “least original song” winners Beverly Jackfruit and François Jean-Rudy, launching into a loose, silly routine that mercifully broke up the monotony of all the screens. Rudolph tapped Poehler’s “perky” breast and called her Tina before announcing she’d had a “vodka epidural.” Thompson mumbled in fake French. They sang a Seventies funk bar of a mythical Crown theme and even needled Aaron Sorkin with some lines from their “winning” creation for The Trial of the Chicago 7: “The seven of us, making friends/We may look different but we talk the same.” Do we spy next year’s hosts? MF

Until last night, the first and only woman to win a Golden Globe for best director was Barbra Streisand for Yentl in 1984. But Chloe Zhao finally broke up the man parade — in a year when an unprecedented three out of five nominees were women (including Regina King and Emerald Fennell) — with her masterful helming of Nomadland. Truly, no one’s camera moves quite like Zhao’s in her portrait of American nomads swung between financial instability and freedom. Her cinematic eye gives equal attention to the great Frances McDormand in the leading role, the real-life wanderers that populate the movie, and the wide-open, windswept landscape of the American West. As the film went on to take this year’s top honor, best film drama, Zhao described Nomadland as “a pilgrimage through grief and healing. For everyone who has gone through this difficult and beautiful journey at some point in their lives, this is for you. We don’t say goodbye; we say see you down the road.” A fitting closing thought in an era that has taken so much from so many of us. JS