2024 Golden Globe AwardsBig Winners of the Night Include ‘Oppenheimer,’ ‘Succession,’ ‘Beef’ and ‘The Bear’
“Oppenheimer” emerged as the movie to beat in the coming Oscar race, winning five Golden Globes, and HBO’s “Succession” was the top television winner, as expected, with four trophies.
Sonja Flemming/CBS ENTERTAINMENT, via Associated Press
Sonja Flemming/CBS ENTERTAINMENT, via Associated Press
The producer Emma Thomas, front left, with the director Christopher Nolan, right, accepting the best drama award for “Oppenheimer.”Credit...Sonja Flemming/CBS Entertainment, via Associated Press
The 81st Golden Globes kicked off Hollywood’s awards season on Sunday in a chaotic and sloppy manner, with the host, Jo Koy, delivering a train wreck of a monologue, winners alternately seeming to take the ceremony seriously and not at all, and prizes going to a wide array of films and television shows.
“Oppenheimer,” which entered the ceremony with eight nominations, emerged as the movie to beat in the coming Oscar race, winning five Globes, including for best drama, Christopher Nolan’s directing and Cillian Murphy’s acting. “Barbie,” “The Holdovers” and “Poor Things” also won notable movie awards.
Here are the other main takeaways:
The most nominated film, “Barbie,” which received citations in nine categories, won two Globes, including the one for best cinematic and box office achievement, a newly created prize. Its other victory was for best song.
HBO’s “Succession” was the top television winner, as expected. The show collected Globes for best drama, actress (Sarah Snook), actor (Kieran Culkin) and supporting actor (Matthew Macfadyen).
“Poor Things,” a surreal science-fiction romance, won best movie, comedy or musical. Emma Stone, the film’s star, received the Globe for best comedic actress, while Paul Giamatti (“The Holdovers”) received the statuette for best comedic actor.
Lily Gladstone won the Globe for best actress in a drama for her performance in “Killers of the Flower Moon,” becoming the first Indigenous person to win the award.
Da’Vine Joy Randolph (“The Holdovers”) was honored as best supporting actress. Robert Downey Jr. (“Oppenheimer”) won best supporting actor.
Netflix’s “Beef” and FX’s “The Bear” each won three Globes. “Beef” was named best limited series, and Ali Wong and Steven Yeun collected Globes for their acting in the show. “The Bear” won the trophy for best comedy and two of its stars, Ayo Edebiri and Jeremy Allen White, were honored for their performances.
It was the first time that the Hollywood establishment had convened since the resolution of twin union strikes that shut down the industry for much of the past year. The Globes themselves were looking to turn a page by moving past an ethics, finance and diversity scandal that resulted in the sale of the show, an overhaul of its voting body and a change of network to CBS from NBC.
In recent years the Golden Globes has become known for speeches about causes and concerns, most of them progressive. Last year, the ceremony gave airtime to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, who spoke about his country’s war with Russia. This time around, the host and the winners seemed determined to steer clear of politics, with hot-button subjects like the Israel-Hamas war going unmentioned.
The more the Globes change, however, the more they seem to stay the same. Just as in the past, voters spread their awards far and wide; five movies won at least two trophies. And, just as in the past, there was at least one curve ball — this year in the form of best screenplay, which went to the French film “Anatomy of a Fall.” Gold Derby, which compiles the predictions of two dozen awards handicappers, had predicted that “Barbie” would win.
Jan. 7, 2024, 11:22 p.m. ET
Sinna Nasseri
Reporting from the Beverly Hilton
Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, Oprah Winfrey and Nicolas Cage at the Golden Globes.
From left, Cillian Murphy, Olli Haaskivi, Matt Damon and Dane DeHaan in a scene set at Los Alamos.Credit...Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures
“Oppenheimer,” Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster biopic about the physicist who led the effort that produced the first nuclear weapons, took home the top drama prize, besting a field that included Martin Scorsese’s epic crime drama “Killers of the Flower Moon” and Bradley Cooper’s Leonard Bernstein biopic, “Maestro.” Nolan’s film, which is based on Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s 2005 biography “American Prometheus,” was an unlikely box office success given its three-hour run time and the darkness of the subject matter. It’s safe to say it was the beneficiary of a serious “Barbenheimer” boost.
Lily Gladstone as an Osage bride in “Killers of the Flower Moon,” directed by Martin Scorsese.Credit...Apple TV+
In a history-making triumph, Lily Gladstone has become the first Indigenous person to win a Golden Globe for best actress, said a spokesman for the organization that hands out the awards.
Gladstone played Mollie Burkhart, an Osage woman whose family members are murdered as part of a plot to take their fortune, in Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon.” Gladstone, whose background is Blackfeet and Nez Perce, is only the second Native actress to receive any recognition from the Globes: Irene Bedard was nominated in 1995 for “Lakota Woman: Siege at Wounded Knee,” a television movie.
After an ovation, an overcome Gladstone spoke a few lines in the Blackfeet language, “the beautiful community nation that raised me, that encouraged me to keep going, keep doing this,” she explained in English. She also thanked her director and co-stars, including Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, then dedicated the award to “every little rez kid” who had a dream.
Here’s her speech:
“I love everyone in this room right now, thank you. I don’t have words. I just spoke a bit of Blackfeet language, the beautiful community nation that raised me, that encouraged me to keep going, keep doing this. To my mom, who even though she’s not Blackfeet worked tirelessly to get our language into our classroom, so I had a Blackfeet language teacher growing up.
“… I’m so grateful that I can speak even a little bit of my language, which I’m not fluent enough here, because in this business Native actors used to speak their lines in English and then the sound mixers would run them backwards to accomplish Native languages on camera. This is an historic one. It doesn’t belong to just me. I’m holding it right now, I’m holding it with all my beautiful sisters in the film and my mother [in the film], Tantoo Cardinal.
“… Thank you, thank you Marty, thank you Leo, thank you Bob. You are all changing things. Thank you for being such allies. Thank you, Eric [Roth, the co-screenwriter], thank you Chief Standing Bear … and the Osage Nation.
“… This is for every little rez kid, every little urban kid, every little Native kid who has a dream, who is seeing themselves represented and our stories told by ourselves in our own words with tremendous allies and tremendous trust with and from each other. Thank you all so much.
Whether Gladstone is the first Indigenous person to win a Globe overall, that is unclear. The singer Buffy Sainte-Marie, who has said she was born to an Indigenous woman, won a Golden Globe in 1983 for the song “Up Where We Belong” from the movie “An Officer and a Gentleman.” But her heritage has recently been disputed.
There have been other Indigenous nominees. This year, the late musician Robbie Robertson, who was Mohawk and Cayuga, was nominated for original score for “Killers.” (He lost to Ludwig Göransson for “Oppenheimer.”) Going further back, Chief Dan George was nominated for the 1970 comic western “Little Big Man” and Adam Beach for the 2007 television adaptation “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.”
“Killers,” based on the nonfiction book by David Grann, was reconceived early on to focus on the relationship between Mollie and her husband, Ernest (Leonardo DiCaprio), who is engaged in the conspiracy to kill her relatives.
Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo in “Poor Things.”Credit...Atsushi Nishijima/Searchlight Pictures
“Poor Things,” Yorgos Lanthimos’s black comedy about the sexual awakening of a young Victorian woman played by Emma Stone, won the top Globe for a musical or comedy, topping Greta Gerwig’s plastic-fantastic “Barbie” and Cord Jefferson’s cerebral satire “American Fiction.” Lanthimos’s film, a riff on the classic Frankenstein story but based on Alasdair Gray’s 1992 novel of the same name, also stars Mark Ruffalo and Willem Dafoe, who deliver performances that The New York Times’s chief film critic Manohla Dargis called “precise and refined” (Stone, she wrote, gives her toddler-esque character “the herky-jerky instability of a child finding her sea legs.”)
Paul Giamatti in “The Holdovers.”Credit...Seacia Pavao/Focus Features, via Associated Press
Paul Giamatti won his third Golden Globe on Sunday, for his role in Alexander Payne’s comedy drama “The Holdovers.” In it, Giamatti plays an unpopular, cantankerous classics teacher who is forced to remain with students at a New England prep school during the Christmas break in the early 1970s. The film was widely acclaimed by critics.
Giamatti previously won for his work in the miniseries “John Adams,” in 2009, and the film “Barney’s Version,” in 2011.
Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy
Paul Giamatti, “The Holdovers”
Jan. 7, 2024, 10:42 p.m. ET
Margaret Lyons
Television critic
“Beef” and “The Bear” both go 3 for 3, and “Succession” goes 4 for 5 (only losing in supporting actress, which went to Elizabeth Debicki for “The Crown”). Keep those thank-you lists fresh for another week; it seems likely we will see a similar pattern at the Emmys. That’s not bad, but it does make things a little snoozy.
From left, Jeremy Strong, Sarah Snook and Kieran Culkin in “Succession.”Credit...HBO, via Associated Press
“Succession” went out on top at its final Golden Globes, picking up its third statuette for best drama for its fourth and final season.
The victory moves it into a three-way tie with “Mad Men” and “The X-Files” for most wins in the category. (“Succession” previously won in 2020 and 2022 for its second and third seasons). The HBO drama won a total of four Globes Sunday night, with Kieran Culkin, Sarah Snook and Matthew Macfadyen picking up acting awards.
The show’s 10-episode final season, which featured one death so explosive it earned a fictional Los Angeles Times obituary, set a record for the most nominations received by a TV program in a single season, garnering nine overall. Two earlier series had eight: “The Thorn Birds” in 1984 and “L.A. Law” in 1990.
“We decided this was the right time to end the show, and that was very bittersweet, particularly for me, because I finally bought some shoes that are appropriate for awards and this might be the last time I ever get to wear them,” Jesse Armstrong, the show’s creator, said while accepting the award. “It is bittersweet, but things like this make it rather sweeter.”
“Succession” earned eight other Globes nominations this year were for acting.
For his role as Roman Roy, Culkin picked up his first Golden Globe for best actor in a drama TV series.
“I was nominated for a Golden Globe 20 years ago, and when that moment passed I sort of remember thinking I’m never going to be back in this room again. Which, was fine. Whatever. But thanks to ‘Succession,’ I’ve been in here a couple of times. It’s nice, but I sort of accepted I’m never going to be onstage, so this is a nice moment.”
Macfadyen also picked up his first Globe, winning best male actor in a television supporting role for his role as Tom Wambsgans.
“I just adored every second playing the weird and wonderful human grease stain that is Tom Wambsgans,” he said.
Best Television Series, Drama
“Succession”
Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series, Drama
For as boring as this show has been, it could have been worse: Right about now we could have been sitting through the second of the lifetime achievement speeches. Producers had a hard time finding people to agree to be honored (yep, they have to agree — welcome to Hollywood), and so decided to retire the Cecil B. DeMille Award for movies and Carol Burnett Award for television, supposedly just for the year.
Jeremy Allen White and Ayo Edebiri in “The Bear.”Credit...Chuck Hodes/FX
Globe voters said “Yes, chef,” to “The Bear,” which beat out “Ted Lasso” and “Abbott Elementary” to win best comedy.
One quibble: Is “The Bear” even a comedy? Any episode of the restaurant-set FX series has more agita and fewer jokes than most dramas. Some scenes and some entire episodes, like the most recent season’s standout, “Fishes,” can only be watched through fingers. But “The Bear,” created by Christopher Storer, also has a softish heart — among other organ meats — and a half-hour running time, enough to land it in this category.
The first season, which saw Jeremy Allen White’s troubled chef, Carmy, inherit the restaurant from his dead brother, was a surprise hit despite its grubby milieu and absence of bankable stars. (Apologies, Oliver Platt.) It made an immediate internet pinup of White and a darling of his co-star, Ayo Edebiri, who plays a driven upstart chef. The second season saw the eatery morph from an Italian beef joint to a Michelin-courting sensation. It focused more on the camaraderie among the staff even as it broke a few characters away for special episodes, and it was praised for its realistic depictions of work, grief, Chicago, high-end food and friendship.
A nominee last year for best comedy, “The Bear” yielded a surprise best lead actor win for White as the aggrieved Carmy. Repeating his win in the same category this year was less of a surprise.
“I can’t believe I’m in this room with all these people I’ve loved so much, admired so much for so long. It’s unreal. I love this show,” he said.
White’s co-star, Edebiri, won her first Golden Globe for best actress in a TV comedy.
“Everybody at ‘The Bear,’ that’s my family,” Edebiri said in her breathless acceptance speech. “I love you guys so much. It’s an honor to work with you and grow alongside you.”
“All of my agents, managers, assistants, the people who answer my emails, y’all are real ones,” she added. “Thank you for answering my crazy, crazy emails.”
Lionel Boyce, who plays Marcus, spoke on behalf of the show’s cast and crew accepting the award. “Most importantly, thank you to the entire restaurant community,” he said. “We played these characters for a couple of hours a day for a couple of months out of the year, but this is your reality, the highs and the lows. So thank you for embracing us.”
A correction was made on
Jan. 8, 2024
:
An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of the actor who plays Marcus on “The Bear.” He is Lionel Boyce, not Bryce.
Best Limited Series, Anthology Series or a Motion Picture made for Television
“Beef”
Jan. 7, 2024, 10:13 p.m. ET
Margaret Lyons
Television critic
Home stretch! Only a few more chances for the presenters and the camerawork to be on the same page at the beginning of the intro segments …
Jan. 7, 2024, 10:12 p.m. ET
Kyle Buchanan
The Projectionist, at the Beverly Hilton
The mic is very low during presenter patter, so if it seems like the audience is barely reacting, that may be why. (The host Jo Koy does not have this excuse to lean on.)
Jan. 7, 2024, 10:06 p.m. ET
Sinna Nasseri
Reporting from the Beverly Hilton
Greta Gerwig with Noah Baumbach, Billie Eilish with Finneas O’Connell, and Meryl Streep at the Golden Globes.
Three songs from “Barbie” were nominated for a Globe.Credit...Warner Bros.
The pop star Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?” — a haunting, tender piano-backed ballad that closed “Barbie” — has won the Golden Globe for best song, a category dominated by tunes from the blockbuster about Mattel’s most famous doll.
“What Was I Made For?” was written by Eilish and her brother, Finneas O’Connell. Also nominated from Greta Gerwig’s live-action adaptation were “Dance the Night,” with music and lyrics by Dua Lipa, Mark Ronson, Andrew Wyatt and Caroline Ailin, and performed by Lipa, and “I’m Just Ken,” by Ronson and Wyatt, and performed by Ryan Gosling.
“What Was I Made For” also beat out offerings from Bruce Springsteen, Lenny Kravitz and Jack Black.
Finally a win for “Barbie,” in the original-song race, and though Billie Eilish claims she wasn’t expecting it, I was: Her song “What Was I Made For?” is the Oscar front-runner.
Cillian Murphy won for his performance as the title character in “Oppenheimer.”Credit...Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures, via Associated Press
Cillian Murphy’s acclaimed performance as the father of the atomic bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer, in Christopher Nolan’s biographical drama “Oppenheimer,” has netted the Irish actor his first Golden Globe. Murphy, known for his onscreen intensity, has long been a muse for Nolan and has starred in six of the director’s films, largely in supporting roles until “Oppenheimer.”
This was Murphy’s second Globes nomination. He was recognized in the comedy category for “Breakfast on Pluto,” a 2005 Neil Jordan film in which he played a transgender woman.
Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture, Drama
Emma Stone in “Poor Things.”Credit...Searchlight Pictures
Emma Stone won her second Golden Globe, for her performance in “Poor Things,” a comedy-drama riff on the Frankenstein legend. In the film, she plays Bella, a Victorian-era woman who was brought back to life with the brain of a fetus; her performance was widely praised by critics.
Manohla Dargis wrote in The New York Times that Stone “builds her performance so discreetly — with words, gestures and footfalls that stagger and halt only to then seamlessly flow together — that it can seem as if all the changes Bella experiences were emanating from deep within the character, not the actor.”
The film solidified Stone’s partnership with the Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos, with whom she made the 2018 film “The Favourite.” Stone previously won a Golden Globe in 2017 for her performance in “La La Land.”
“I’m a girl from Arizona and he’s a guy from Athens. I don’t know how this worked, because our personalities could not be more different, but it’s amazing,” Stone said in an interview with The New York Times last year.
Rumer Willis did her Miss Golden Globe duty while Sandra Bullock gave Colin Farrell a best actor trophy in 2009.Credit...NBCUniversal, via Getty Images
The reformed Golden Globes have quietly nixed a tradition that started in the 1960s and provided endless amusement for Hollywood’s cattier contingent: nepo babies as onstage assistants.
Instead, two college students, deemed Golden Globe Scholars, will carry statuettes to the stage, lurk (elegantly) in the background during acceptance speeches and escort winners to the wings. The students received grants from the Golden Globe Foundation, which is related to the awards but managed separately. It made $5 million in grant awards in 2023, with an emphasis on students in underserved communities.
In some ways, Miss Golden Globe functioned as the Hollywood equivalent of being presented to society. For decades, Globes organizers selected the child of a celebrity, with publicists sometimes pitching candidates.
Melanie Griffith (the daughter of Tippi Hedren), Laura Dern (the daughter of Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd) and Rumer Willis (the daughter of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore) have Miss Golden Globe on their résumés. Every once in awhile, the ceremony shook things up with a Mr. Golden Globe, as in 2003, when AJ Lamas (the son of Lorenzo Lamas) took the gig.
But the recent overhaul of the Globes following an ethics, finance and diversity scandal has apparently extended to family connections.
Nepotism has always been prevalent in Hollywood, but advantaged offspring have lately tried to practice it somewhat less openly — ever since New York magazine derisively deemed 2022 “the year of the nepo baby” and embarrassed dozens of them in print. Since the Globes organization itself was embroiled in controversy, finding willing participants undoubtedly became even more difficult.
![[object Object]](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/01/07/multimedia/07golden-globes-mqjh/07golden-globes-mqjh-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp)
![[object Object]](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/01/07/multimedia/07golden-globes-mqjh/07golden-globes-mqjh-threeByTwoMediumAt2X-v2.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp)
