In a normal year, the announcement of the Golden Globes nominations traditionally mark the moment that awards season kicks off into high gear.
Stars would be up at the crack of dawn, hoping to hear their names read. Publicists and studios would be preparing out a flurry of press releases to tout the nominees. Awards prognosticators would be watching carefully for hints of which way the Oscar winds might be blowing.
Suffice to say, this is not a normal year.
Monday morning's announcement of the 79th Golden Globe nominations came as the organization that hands out the awards, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, remains under a cloud. The usual glitzy, star-studded telecast presenting the awards has been scrapped for 2022 in the wake of a February Los Angeles Times investigation that revealed the association had no Black members and detailed allegations of financial and ethical lapses within the group.
Still, the embattled HFPA forged ahead with this year's nominations, hoping to preserve the viability of the awards until 2023 when NBC has said it hopes to broadcast them again. The HFPA is set to hand out its awards Jan. 9 in a yet-to-be-determined ceremony, though it is unclear at this point whether anyone will actually be on hand to accept them. (The event is scheduled for the same night as the rival Critics Choice Association's awards, which will be simulcast on The CW and TBS.)
Before announcing the nominations, HFPA president Helen Hoehne spoke of the steps the group has taken in recent months to deliver the "transformational change" it promised in March.
"This has been a year of change and reflection for the Hollywood Foreign Press Association," she said. "For eight months, we've worked tirelessly as an organization to be better. We changed our rules and bylaws, added a new code of conduct and restructured our governance. We also have 21 new members, the largest and most diverse in our 79-year-old history. Not only have they brought in a fresh perspective, but ideas that will help us continue to evolve."
Rapper Snoop Dogg — better known these days for doing commercials for Tostitos and Dunkin' Donuts than for anything awards-related — was brought on stage to announce the nominations after more suitable prospects, including actress Gabrielle Union, turned the group down.
In a year in which the HFPA was largely cut off from its usual access to press conferences and screenings, the nominations themselves contained the group's traditional mix of expected choices — including the feel-good "King Richard" and Steven Spielberg's remake "West Side Story," each of which earned several nods — and a handful of head-scratchers, like Emma Stone's surprise nod for best actress in a musical or comedy for "Cruella."
Kenneth Branagh's autobiographical "Belfast" and Jane Campion's brooding Western drama "The Power of the Dog" led the film field with seven nominations apiece, including best motion picture drama, while HBO's "Succession" topped the TV list with five nominations, including best drama series.
As expected, Netflix easily led pack among film studios with 17 nominations (and an additional 10 on the TV side), powered by films like "Don't Look Up," "The Power of the Dog" and "Tick, Tick… Boom!"
HBO and HBO Max topped the TV networks with 15 nominations (with film studio counterpart Warner Bros. landing eight additional nominations).
But in the hour after the nominations were unveiled, the reaction from Hollywood was collective silence. In the run-up to the announcement, talent publicists and studios had come to the general consensus that it would be safer to avoid publicly being seen to celebrate nominations from a group whose credibility has been tarnished.
As one studio executive told the L.A. Times in October, "We've always been supportive of the Globes as an organization, but we don't want to just say something won, we want to make sure it means something. We want to get to a place where there are no asterisks or continuing questions about the awards."
On social media as well, aside from scattered enthusiasm from fans of nominees like Lady Gaga and Kristen Stewart, there was little of the usual frenzied reaction to the Globes nominations, with many likely unaware that they were even taking place.
"Wait, we're paying attention to the Golden Globes?" Rolling Stone TV critic Alan Sepinwall wrote on Twitter, capturing the confusion that many likely felt. "Now more than ever, why?"
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