The good, the bad and the completely horrible of this year's Golden Globe nominations
LatestThe nominations for the Golden Globes were announced this morning, and while the list itself is honestly less exciting and endearing than announcer Laura Dern’s reading glasses, it’s certainly helping this awards season turn into a pretty dramatic one. We’ve rounded up some of the highlights—and lowlights—for your consideration.
The Good
First of all, let’s just talk about how Barry Jenkins’ incredible Moonlight is continuing to dominate the season. After winning big at the Critics Choice Awards last night and the Gotham Awards last month, Moonlight snagged six Golden Globe nominations. I mean I’m not surprised, but it’s awesome nonetheless.
Overall, women of color held it down. Ruth Negga became the first woman of color to be nominated for Best Actress in a drama in five years for her role in Loving. (Octavia Spencer won in 2012 for The Help.) Viola Davis (Fences), Naomie Harris (Moonlight), and Spencer (Hidden Figures) all scored nominations for Best Supporting Actress—more than black women and women of color overall garnered over the last five years in the category.
On the television side of things, of the six women nominated for Best Actress in a comedy, three were women of color: Issa Rae (Insecure), Gina Rodriguez (Jane the Virgin), and Tracee Ellis Ross (Black-ish). Three of the five actors nominated for Best Actor in a comedy were men of color: Anthony Anderson (Black-ish), Gael Garcia Bernal (Mozart in the Jungle), and Donald Glover (Atlanta).
It was good to see my faves Riz Ahmed (The Night Of) and Thandie Newton (Westworld) score noms for their work, and it’s also great to see Moana rightfully earn a nomination for Best Animated Feature.
All this news is technically Good, but it should probably be noted that there is still an insane dearth of actors and actresses of color in film and television, which is decidedly Not Good. Black actors have made some of progress in getting the roles and the recognition they deserve, but Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, and other actors still have a long way to go.
The Bad
People of color were entirely shut out of both the Best Actor and Best Actress categories for movie comedies this year. Oscar Isaac (Inside Llewyn Davis, 2014) and Quvenzhané Wallis (Annie, 2015) are the only actor and actress of color to have been nominated in the category in the last five years. The category of Best Actress in TV dramas was also completely white.
Also, critically-acclaimed, Cannes darling American Honey was snubbed entirely from the Golden Globes. While director Andrea Arnold did not score a nomination for Best Director, someone else sure did: Mel Gibson! Because apparently he is back!
His movie Hacksaw Ridge was also nominated for Best Picture. After about a decade of being blacklisted in Hollywood, it looks like the Aussie, known for being racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, as well as verbally and physically abusive toward his former partner Oksana Grigorieva, has held out long enough for people to hopefully forget how horrible he is because Hollywood just loves a good redemption arc.