Golden Globes 2018: winners, nominations, and biggest moments

At this year’s State of the Union, chances are you’ll notice more people wearing black clothing than usual. The 65 members of the Democratic Women’s Working Group and their supporters — potentially including some men and even, perhaps, some Republicans — will be wearing black in solidarity with victims of sexual abuse.

And members of the Congressional Black Caucus will be wearing small red pins in honor of Recy Taylor, the civil rights hero who died in late December. Taylor was abducted and raped in 1944, and although two all-white juries refused to indict her rapists, she continued to speak out against them and for justice throughout her life.

Ivanka Trump praised Oprah Winfrey’s viral Golden Globes speech and tried to hop on the Time’s Up movement of women speaking up against sexual misconduct.

The women of the movement clapped back: Thanks, but no thanks.

Even before actresses and actors committed to wearing black to Sunday night’s Golden Globes, it was clear that this year’s show would be a little different from its predecessors.

Hollywood stars often use awards shows to talk about social change, but in 2017, actresses and actors helped kick off a nationwide moment of reckoning when they reported harassment and abuse by producer Harvey Weinstein and other powerful Hollywood men. Since that initial revelation in October, dozens of women and men in the entertainment industry have come forward to report harassment at the hands of mostly male figures who abused their power, causing many to look inward at the industry’s problems. As Oprah Winfrey put it in her acceptance speech for the Cecil B. DeMille Award on Sunday night, “Each of us in this room are celebrated because of the stories that we tell. This year, we became the story.”

Oprah Winfrey’s powerful speech at the 2018 Golden Globes on Sunday has stirred up speculation that the media magnate might make a run for the White House in 2020. And while Winfrey has denied harboring presidential ambitions, it hasn’t stopped multiple from observers from asking: Why not give #Oprah2020 a try?

Winfrey, a talk show host, actress, producer, philanthropist, and all-around media heavyweight, on Sunday delivered a moving address in accepting the Golden Globes’ Cecil B. DeMill award for career achievement. “I want all the girls watching here, now, to know that a new day is on the horizon!” she declared in a nearly 10-minute speech in which she threaded together themes of the historical struggle for civil and gender rights, her personal story, and a mood of optimism ahead. (You can read the full transcript of the speech on Vox.)

“I want all the girls watching here now to know that a new day is on the horizon!” Oprah Winfrey said, in the way only Oprah Winfrey can, where it seems like a proclamation has been issued from on high. “And when that new day finally dawns, it will be because of a lot of magnificent women, many of whom are right here in this room tonight, and some pretty phenomenal men, fighting hard to make sure that they become the leaders who take us to the time when nobody ever has to say, ‘Me too,’ again.”

It was the closing point of Winfrey’s speech accepting the Golden Globes’ Cecil B. DeMille award for career achievement, a speech that started with Winfrey reminiscing about being a young girl in 1964, watching Sidney Poitier become the first black man to win the Academy Award for Best Actor, and then took listeners through a lifetime spent watching other people fight for justice, some very publicly and some without their names ever becoming known.

In opening the 2018 Golden Globe awards, Seth Meyers wasted no time addressing the somber subject on everyone’s minds. “Good evening, ladies and remaining gentlemen,” he grinned slash grimaced, breaking the ice as best he could.

Hosting the first awards show of 2018, Meyers had a daunting task ahead of him. How would he toe the line between entertaining the room and making light of the horrific systemic sexism that came to light in the fall of 2017, when allegations of sexual harassment and assault broke against Harvey Weinstein — and then, one after another, many other male Hollywood titans? How was he supposed to crack jokes while facing a sea of black dresses, worn in protest of sexual abuse in the workplace?

You know what? It could’ve been worse.

Lest we sound glib, consider that the 2018 Golden Globes marked Hollywood’s most prominent public showing since the horrific allegations of sexual harassment and abuse against Harvey Weinstein broke in October, sparking waves of similar revelations both inside and outside of the entertainment industry. For months, sexual abuse has been at the forefront of the nation’s minds, and as ground zero, Hollywood has become the somewhat unlikely face for a concerted push to change the very fabric of how society (mal)functions.

The red carpet at the 2018 Golden Globes was a careful balancing act. Traditionally, a red carpet is a frothy celebration of fashion — albeit usually safe and sedate fashion — and celebrity gossip: “Look at what that actress is wearing.” “Oh, I didn’t know that pop star was married to that actor.” It’s best watched with wine firmly in hand and pizza waiting on the coffee table.

But this year, in the era of #MeToo and #TimesUp, celebrities walking the red carpet didn’t have the space to be quite so frivolous. They had to acknowledge the systemic misogyny of the entertainment industry and at least pay lip service to making a difference going forward — and, with the Golden Globes being a Hollywood event, they had to do so while being self-congratulatory and glitzy.

The 2018 Golden Globe Awards, hosted by Seth Meyers, kicked off Hollywood’s annual awards season on Sunday, January 7, with several strong statements in support of the #MeToo movement, as well as the usual mix of expected, surprising, and flat-out weird winners in both film and television.

In the film categories, the big winner was Martin McDonagh’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri which took home four awards: Best Motion Picture — Drama, Best Screenplay, Best Actress in a Motion Picture — Drama (Frances McDormand), and Best Supporting Actor (Sam Rockwell). Lady Bird, directed by Greta Gerwig, was also a notable winner; it took home two awards, for Best Motion Picture — Comedy and Best Actress in a Motion Picture — Comedy (Saoirse Ronan).

In the first hour of Sunday’s Golden Globes telecast, many Hollywood luminaries addressed sexual harassment, gender inequality, and the #MeToo movement. But nobody did it like Laura Dern.

Dern began the acceptance speech for her supporting actress win by thanking her co-stars on HBO’s Big Little Lies, the show’s producers, and creator David E. Kelley — who, she said, had given her the role of Renata Klein, “a terrified mother, terrified because her little girl was being abused and bullied and she was too afraid to speak up.” Then came the pivot:

While walking the 2018 Golden Globes red carpet, which promises to be filled with acknowledgments of the systemic misogyny of Hollywood that range from cringingly awkward to deeply powerful, Debra Messing started things off with a bang.

In an interview with E!’s Giuliana Rancic, Messing took the opportunity to speak out against E!’s recently revealed history of gender discrimination.

The 75th annual Golden Globes will air live on NBC on Sunday, January 7, at 8 pm Eastern/5 pm Pacific. Seth Meyers will host the show, which will be held at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles.

The annual event, organized by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HPFA), hands out trophies for achievement in both film and television. On the TV side, the HBO series Big Little Lies leads the nominations with six, followed by FX’s Feud: Bette and Joan with four. Despite the dominance of these titles, the TV categories could also see a few predicted upsets, like Hulu’s freshman series The Handmaid’s Tale perhaps besting more established heavy hitters in the TV drama category, like Netflix’s Stranger Things and HBO’s Game of Thrones.

The Golden Globes — the trendy, tipsy cousin of more “prestigious” awards shows like the Oscars and the Emmys — has been handing out shiny trophies to movies and television series for the past 75 years. It’s one of the more unpredictable ceremonies of the awards season, thanks to its tendency to honor slightly less traditional works than the Oscars or the Emmys, as well as its open bar.

But when Golden Globe winners thank the Hollywood Foreign Press Association in their acceptance speeches, who, exactly, are they talking about? And why? What is this mysterious organization that hands out Golden Globes, and how does it affect awards season as a whole?

Many Hollywood stars will be wearing black to Sunday’s Golden Globes in solidarity with the #TimesUp and #MeToo movements — but the awards show hasn’t always been a forum for addressing sexual predation in Hollywood.

And in a series of tweets on Sunday morning, Dylan Farrow — who protested the Golden Globes four years ago when they honored her father, Woody Allen, with a lifetime achievement award — noted that fact:

Sunday’s Golden Globe Awards will kick off the entertainment industry’s 2018 awards season — and with it, a year’s worth of red-carpet coverage. Fashion writers around the world are gearing up to find the best bon mots to describe the glitzy, glamorous gowns and suits of Hollywood’s biggest stars, and among those writers are Jessica Morgan and Heather Cocks, a.k.a. the Fug Girls, who have been writing about fashion on their blog Go Fug Yourself with incisive wit since 2004.

But this year’s Golden Globes promises to be a more somber affair than usual. The ceremony is happening as Hollywood is knee deep in the post-Weinstein reckoning with its culture of sexual abuse and systemic sexism, and its promos — some of which feature the tagline, “Hollywood, we’ve got a lot to talk about” — promise that host Seth Meyers won’t be avoiding the issue. And in support of the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, many of those attending have pledged to wear black.

The 2018 Golden Globes, hosted by Seth Meyers, will be awarded on Sunday, January 8, with the ceremony airing live at 8 pm Eastern on NBC. (It will also be live-streamed online for the first time.)

The annual event, which honors performances in both television and film, is considered one of Hollywood’s most “fun” awards shows due to how early the awards fall in the season, the presence of alcohol (resulting in more celebrities letting loose), and general unpredictability about the winners. In other words, they’re usually a pretty good time, as far as three-hour awards shows go.

The nominations for the Golden Globes, made by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, are notoriously capricious and unpredictable, satisfying no one and startling many. This year’s nominations are no different, with some obvious choices (like The Shape of Water and Game of Thrones) alongside some real curveballs.

In a field as crowded as this one — there are dozens of TV shows and films nominated for awards, with few clear frontrunners in any category going forward — it’s hard to make sweeping pronouncements about trends in the industry. But changes in the TV industry are evident in the nominations, and the set of sexual assault allegations in Hollywood made an impact in at least one category as well.