Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Warrick Page/Max, Ingvar Kenne/Curio/Sony Pictures Television, Warner Bros., Eric Zachanowich/A24/Everett Collection
On Monday morning, America’s most spherical awards show overcame presenter Marlon Wayans’s battle with non-English names to announce the nominations for the 83rd Annual Golden Globes. Ever since reforming their membership a few years back, the Globes have backed away from their particular brand of shamelessness and gotten a little bit hipper. Now they’re essentially a critics’ group with a TV deal. Still, the wide scope of their nominations — separate categories for comedies and dramas, a whole slate of TV noms that operate on a different calendar from the Emmys’, and for the first time, a category for podcasts — means plenty of room for surprises. And the vestiges of Old Globes DNA in their system ensures many worthy contenders still get left out.
The Globes stick a dagger into Sinners’ supporting players.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before: The Golden Globes handed a Black-led film fewer noms than everyone expected. Last year saw lower-key movies like Sing Sing and Hard Truths underperform. This year it happened to Sinners, a film the Globes treated like a top-tier contender — until they got to the acting categories. Despite pulling in seven nominations, Sinners’ only acting recognition came for Michael B. Jordan in Best Actor in a Drama. No Delroy Lindo in Supporting Actor, no Wunmi Mosaku in Supporting Actress. Given Sinners’ overall strength, I still think one or both of them will manage to break through with Oscar. Nevertheless, this is a sign that, as much as the Globes can claim to have cleaned up their act in some regards, other long-standing issues were not scrubbed away in the organizational shuffle.
A huge morning for Neon.
For months, pundits have been wondering whether Neon will be able to go five-for-five in the Best International Film category. If the Globes were any indication, those conversations were setting the bar too low. Neon absolutely dominated Monday morning’s proceedings, pulling in 21 total nominations — five more than second-place finisher Warner Bros., which everyone agrees has the season’s two biggest Oscar contenders. The indie studio took advantage of the Globes’ post-Minari move to allow foreign-language contenders to compete in the other Best Picture categories: Of the 12 nominees in Best Drama and Best Musical/Comedy, four were Neon films. Two of those, Iran’s It Was Just an Accident and Norway’s Sentimental Value, also earned Director and Screenplay honors, cementing their spots in the season’s top tier. The other two, South Korea’s No Other Choice and Brazil’s The Secret Agent, were welcome surprises. (All the more so for also earning love for their leading men, Lee Byung-hun and Wagner Moura.) And of course, they all also showed up in the Globes’ foreign-language category as well, alongside the fifth Neon film, Spain’s Sirāt. The conventional wisdom that all of these international contenders would cannibalize each other seems to have been misguided; with the Globes at least, this global roster appears to be lifting each other up.
The time is now for Richard Linklater.
Unless you’re Steven Soderbergh, it’s not always a good thing for a director to have two films in one awards season. Remember what happened to Luca Guadagnino once Challengers got bumped into the same year as Queer? But the double-up was not a problem for Richard Linklater. The famously prolific director — who balances making new releases while also shooting movies that won’t come out for another decade — managed to get two 2025 titles into the Globes’ Best Musical or Comedy category: the Broadway chamber piece Blue Moon and the Breathless tribute Nouvelle Vague. (Blue Moon also earned a nomination for star Ethan Hawke.) That’s half a Neon, just from one guy!
Nothing Wicked This Way Comes.
As a Bostonian might say, last year at the Globes was Wicked Good, but this year was Wicked Bad. Though Wicked: For Good managed to exceed its predecessor’s four nominations, that total was fool’s gold. Two of them came in Best Original Song, where the first movie wasn’t eligible. Worse, even with plenty of spots for the taking, the sequel couldn’t snag a Best Musical or Comedy nod. Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande both got in (the former becoming the first Black woman to ever be nominated twice for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy), but with the burgeoning consensus that For Good marks a significant step down, we’ll see if it’s still able to hold onto a spot in the Best Picture ten.
Moribund acting contenders get a boost.
With two additional lead-acting categories — and recently, six slots per category — the Globes often provide a shot in the arm for contenders who’d been struggling to gain traction. So did it come to pass this year that performances many pundits had begun to write off still earned their requisite Golden Globe nominations, including Emma Stone and Jessie Plemons of Bugonia, Jennifer Lawrence of Die My Love, Jeremy Allen White of Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, and Dwayne Johnson of The Smashing Machine. You may notice that most of these people are incredibly famous. Did the Globes nominate them to ensure a high wattage of star power for the telecast? Or did some of these second-tier acting contenders truly get a second wind? We’ll have to wait until January’s noms for the newly rebranded Actor Awards (which you and I know as the SAG Awards) to know for sure.
Including Emily Blunt!
Usually the Globes are good for one bonkers acting nomination a year. This year, that honor went to Emily Blunt of The Smashing Machine, who nabbed a supporting-actress spot for a performance critics describe as “unusually broad,” “a shrill caricature,” and “a great actress stranded in an annoying part.” Did you know this was Emily Blunt’s eighth career Golden Globe nomination? They nominated her for Salmon Fishing in the Yemen! But she hasn’t won since her first, for the TV movie Gideon’s Daughter. I’m just saying, one day they’re going to give her the Cecil B. DeMille Award, and The Smashing Machine will be in her clip reel. You might as well prepare yourself now.
But not including Sydney Sweeney.
Far be it for me to impugn the good name of the Golden Globes, but in case you were wondering whether the new ownership of CBS might have tried to put their thumb on the scale of this year’s nominations, note that registered Republican Sweeney was the rare underperforming famous person to miss out, as her boxing biopic Christy was a no-show.
Eva Victor got in instead.
Let’s file this one under “Bonkers (Positive).” With many of this year’s big movies competing as Musicals or Comedies, there was an open spot or two in Best Actress in a Drama, but few predicted it would go to Eva Victor, the multi-hyphenate behind the little indie Sorry Baby. In many ways, this was one of the least Globes-y picks imaginable — Victor has 0.4 percent as many Instagram followers as Sweeney, the woman she beat out — and it’s proof the new voters are having some impact on the results. (Or that A24 is better at awards campaigning than Black Bear Pictures, Sweeney’s distributor.)
The bottom of the Best Picture field is chaos.
The Globes’ Director and Screenplay categories are not divided up by genre, so they’re the way we can divine who the season’s true heavyweights are. This year, a whopping five films scored the Holy Trinity of Picture/Director/Screenplay love: One Battle After Another, Sentimental Value, Sinners, Hamnet, and It Was Just an Accident. That aligns with most pundits’ view of the field. But when it comes to the bottom half of the Oscars’ Best Picture race, the picture gets blurry. Frankenstein will probably be there. So will Marty Supreme, though the A24 film missed Director and Supporting Actress. But Netflix entries Jay Kelly and Train Dreams only got two Globes nominations apiece, and none in Picture, Director, or Screenplay. Avatar: Fire and Ash received only token attention. There’s a soft underbelly to the Best Picture ten this year, just waiting for someone to exploit. Could Neon sneak a third film in?
KPop Demon Hunters and Avatar get into Cinematic and Box-Office Achievement.
Every year, the Globes’ most misbegotten category gets more hilarious. What’s more laughable this time around: a prize for box-office achievement going to a streaming movie, or one that hasn’t even opened yet? KPop Demon Hunters did eventually get a theatrical release this year, so I’ll give the edge to Avatar: Fire and Ash, which as of this writing has grossed a whole $0.
There were two big questions going into the morning: what exactly is this award? And how would the Globes navigate the sticky world of political podcasts that currently dominate the charts, including right-wing bomb-throwers like Ben Shapiro and Candace Owens, who were both eligible for nomination?
The Globes voting body answered by steering away from all that. Instead, the category leaned into its more intuitive function as a modernizing extension of Hollywood, placing new-media personalities like Call Her Daddy’s Alex Cooper alongside more conventional celebrities with a podcast like Amy Poehler. Hence this lineup: Poehler (Good Hang), Dax Shepard (Armchair Expert), and the Smartless guys, together with Cooper and self-help star Mel Robbins. The only outlier? NPR’s daily podcast Up First, not only the lone news show in the bunch but also the only nominee that’s primarily an audio-first production. — Nicholas Quah
The Globes used to be a reliable source of wacky TV nominations. Mozart in the Jungle winning for Best Musical/Comedy Series, Billy Bob Thornton winning for Goliath, that Emily in Paris nom. And while this year brought a smattering of left-field nominations (see below), the vast majority feel distressingly faithful to what the Emmys awarded in September. Adolescence and The White Lotus lead the field with five nominations apiece, followed by Emmy faves Severance and Only Murders in the Building with four each. It’s not that these nominations are undeserved, but the Golden Globes TV awards don’t exist to re-affirm the Emmys! Where are the surprise nods to shows like High Potential or Elsbeth or Landman? If we can’t count on the Golden Globes to give us just one insane acting nomination for All’s Fair, what are we even doing here?
The Pitt players get no respect.
A Best Drama Series nomination for The Pitt and a Best Actor nod for Noah Wyle are all well and good, but zero nominations for any of the other cast members is disappointing. Not even Emmy-winner Katherine LaNasa cracked the Globe lineup. It doesn’t help that the Globes smush all TV supporting performances into just two categories, combining dramas, comedies, and limited series. But five nominations for White Lotus supporting performances and none for The Pitt? Get with the times, Globes voters.
The Bear hasn’t been slayed quite yet.
The Chicago set stress-com’s awards momentum has steadily slowed for about a year and a half now, and if the Globes had blanked it entirely, it wouldn’t have been altogether surprising. So three nominations — Best Comedy Series and Best Actor and Actress nods for Jeremy Allen White and Ayo Edebiri — feels resurgent. Combine that with White’s movie nomination for Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere and he might even get a little dark-horse momentum to challenge Seth Rogen for the win.
Pedro Pascal’s award hopes are also dead.
Just one nomination for The Last of Us — Bella Ramsey’s lead performance — is an indicator or how much enthusiasm for that second season has waned. But for the traditionally celebrity-friendly Globes voters to pass over Pedro Pascal’s Emmy-nominated performance is especially telling.
Three actors got double nominations.
The Globes’ tendency to hand out multiple nominations to the same performer across TV and movie categories is so excessive and ebullient — abondanza culture but for awards shows. I mentioned Jeremy Allen White getting twin nominations above, but he’s not the only one. Jacob Elordi gets to pair his Frankenstein nomination with a Best Actor in a Limited Series nomination for The Narrow Road to the Deep North, a Prime Video series that flew well below the radar. Meanwhile, the Emmys passed Amanda Seyfried over for her Peacock crime series Long Bright River, but the Globes figured since they were already nominating her performance in The Testament of Ann Lee, why not give her twice the acknowledgement.
One last hurrah for Andor.
We’re entering the final few weeks of us being able to scream to the heavens about how much Andor deserves to be showered with awards. The fact that the Globes declined to nominate the show for Best Drama Series is only fuel for our unending fire. But lo and behold, Diego Luna landed a Best Actor in a Drama Series nomination, the Globes succeeding where the Emmys had repeatedly failed. Sure, he’s gonna lose to Noah Wyle, but let’s enjoy this rare victory for what it is.
The Beast in Me beasts its in-house competition.
As ever, Netflix had too many TV shows for the Globes to nominate them all. Their big winners on nomination day were Adolescence, The Diplomat, and Nobody Wants This, somewhat predictably. But they also got three nominations for The Beast in Me, the psychological crime thriller starring Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys, both of whom got individual acting nominations. While this allows for plentiful Keri Russell/Matthew Rhys reaction shots at the Netflix table, it also means The Beast in Me won the face-off with fellow Netflix limited series Death by Lightning, the historical drama starring Michael Shannon, Matthew Macfadyen, and Betty Gilpin that got completely shut out of the nominations. Other Netflix limited series that fell beneath The Beast’s formidable, uh, paws: Sirens (despite Meghann Fahy’s Emmy nomination), Monster: The Ed Gein Story, and Black Rabbit (though Charlie Hunnam and Jude Law managed Best Actor nominations for those two shows, respectively).
The Globes bring The Girlfriend home for the holidays.
In one of the few refreshingly Globes-y choices, Prime Video’s The Girlfriend — in which Robin Wright Penn stages a grand battle of wills with her son’s new girlfriend — picked up a pair of nominations, one for Best Limited or Anthology Series ad one for Penn herself. Considering Vulture’s Roxana Hadadi called the show “high-trash feminist camp”, I’m taking this as a victory. “High-trash [insert subgenre here] camp” is all I want out of the Golden Globes TV awards. And if they’re not going to give me Sarah Paulson for All’s Fair, I at least demand Robin Wright recognized for going to death-faking lengths to get trollop Olivia Cooke out of her life.
