A replica of a Golden Globe statue appears behind the podium at the nominations for the 81st Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Dec. 11, 2023, in Beverly Hills, Calif.Chris Pizzello/The Associated Press
Michelle Yeoh, Will Ferrell, Angela Bassett and Amanda Seyfried will be among the presenters at Sunday’s Golden Globe Awards.
The show announced its first batch of presenters Wednesday. Others taking the stage will be Julia Garner, George Lopez and Justin Hartley.
Yeoh is returning to the Globes a year after she won best actress in a drama film for Everything Everywhere All at Once, delivering a poignant acceptance speech (and a semi-serious threat to beat up the piano player who started to cut her off).
Wednesday’s announcement is the latest indicator that stars are likely to return to the show as it continues to attempt a return to form after several scandal-tarnished years. The show is known for its boozy celebration of film and television and as an early stop for awards season contenders. Scandals have led to a membership revamp and a new broadcaster for the Sunday show, but a key question remains: Will viewers tune in?
Here’s more to know about the 81st Golden Globe Awards.
How can I watch the Golden Globes?
Viewers in the United States can catch the ceremony, broadcast live from the Beverly Hilton Hotel, beginning at 8 p.m. ET. It will air beginning at 5 p.m. on the West Coast.
The three-hour show will have a strong lead-in since CBS is airing an NFL game directly before the Globes.
CBS says the show will air on its app and stream on Paramount+, but there’s an important caveat. Only Paramount+ subscribers with the Showtime add-on will be able to watch the show live. Otherwise, it’ll be available on the streaming platform on Monday.
What’s new with the Golden Globes?
The 81st Golden Globe Awards will be the first major broadcast of awards season, with a new home on CBS. And while to audiences it might look similar on the surface, it’s been a tumultuous few years behind the scenes after a bombshell report in the Los Angeles Times. The 2021 report found that there were no Black members in the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which voted on the awards.
Stars and studios boycotted the Globes and NBC refused to air it in 2022 as a result. After the group added journalists of colour to its ranks and instituted other reforms to address ethical concerns, the show came back in January, 2023, in a one-year probationary agreement with NBC. The network did not opt to renew.
In June, billionaire Todd Boehly was granted approval to dissolve the HFPA and reinvent the Golden Globes as a for-profit organization. Its assets were acquired by Boehly’s Eldridge Industries, along with Dick Clark Productions, a group that is owned by Penske Media, whose assets also include Variety, Deadline, The Hollywood Reporter, Rolling Stone and Billboard.
The show has also added a new award for stand-up comedy, with Chris Rock, Amy Schumer and former Globes host Ricky Gervais among the nominees.
Who’s hosting the Globes?
Comedian Jo Koy, who has headlined several Netflix specials and starred in last year’s comedy film Easter Sunday, will host the Globes.
Organizers cited his “infectious energy and relatable humour” in announcing Koy would headline the event.
Hosting the Globes typically requires serving a mix of biting humour to the audience of film and television stars and keeping the ceremony from getting too sloppy.
Previous hosts include Ricky Gervais, whose jokes were particularly caustic, the duo of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler and last year’s emcee, Jerrod Carmichael.
What about ‘60 Minutes’?
The Globes, and New Year’s Eve celebrations, are keeping 60 Minutes from airing for two weeks.
CBS aired New Year’s Eve Live: Nashville’s Big Bash on Sunday.
CBS says 60 Minutes will resume on Jan. 14.
Golden Globe nominees
Barbie is the top nominee this year, followed closely by Oppenheimer.
The films reflect one unique aspect of the Globes – they split the top film winners into two categories. With Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer leading the way, it gives the show a chance to capitalize on the Barbenheimer craze that boosted theaters in 2023.
Films nominated for best motion picture drama include Oppenheimer, Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, Bradley Cooper’s Maestro, Celine Song’s Past Lives, Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall and Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest.
In the best motion picture musical or comedy category, Barbie was joined by Ben Affleck’s Air, Cord Jefferson’s American Fiction, Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers, Todd Haynes’s May December and Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things.
Succession was the top-nominated television program, with nine nods including for series stars Brian Cox, Jeremy Strong, Sarah Snook and Kieran Culkin, followed by Hulu’s The Bear.
What are the Globes known for?
The Golden Globe Awards had long been one of the highest-profile awards season broadcasts, second only to the Oscars.
The show was touted as an A-list party whose hosts often took a more irreverent tone than their Academy counterparts. It also only honoured the flashiest filmmaking categories – picture, director, actors among them – meaning no long speeches from visual effects supervisors or directors of little-known shorts.
But the voting body was a small group of around 87 members who wielded incredible influence in the industry and often accepted lavish gifts and travel from studios and awards publicists eager to court favour and win votes.
Some years, the HFPA were pilloried for nominating poorly reviewed films with big-name talent in hopes of getting them to the show – the most infamous being The Tourist, with Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp. In the past decade, they’ve more often overlapped with the Oscars. The show also recognizes television.
Before the expose and public relations crisis though, no one in the industry took much umbrage with who was voting on the awards. The show had become an important part of the Hollywood awards ecosystem, a platform for Oscar hopefuls and was, until recently, a reliable ratings draw. As of 2019, the broadcast was still pulling in nearly 19 million viewers. In 2023, NBC’s Tuesday night broadcast got its smallest audience ever for a traditional broadcast, with 6.3 million viewers.
Who votes on the Globes?
The group nominating and voting for the awards is now made up of a more diverse group of over 300 people from around the world.