Colman Domingo in “Rustin.” (Photo via the “Rustin” Instagram.)
By now, even if you didn’t watch them, you probably already know that Jan. 7’s presentation of the 81st Annual Golden Globe Awards was pretty much a debacle.
From its tense first few minutes, when host Jo Koy (seriously, how many people had to say “no” to the job before they got to Jo Koy?) took his opening monologue rapidly past “irreverent” to “disrespectful” as his audience squirmed uncomfortably, it was clear that the evening’s attempt at a free-wheeling but good-natured roast of Hollywood disguised as an awards show was not going to go as planned. Koy’s efforts at snark were met with palpable hostility from the celebrity crowd, most of whom looked like they would rather be anywhere else but in the audience at the Beverly Hilton, and things just got worse from there.
We could go on about the lackluster, often tone-deaf writing, or the poorly conceived “stunt pairings” of stars as presenters, or the general sloppiness that made the show feel precarious from beginning to end, but fortunately, there’s no need for us to relive all that here. The reason you’re reading this (since this is the Blade, after all) is to find out about the “queer take” on the Golden Globes; unfortunately, the only queer one we can offer is that there really was no queer take on the Golden Globes.
Going into the ceremony, which, as always with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s annual awards show, bestowed the organization’s honors for both film and television, there were only a handful of out queer acting nominees. Two of these competed in a single category (Best Male Actor in a Motion Picture Drama): Colman Domingo, nominated for his star turn in the title role of “Rustin,” and Andrew Scott, who was up for his widely acclaimed performance in Andrew Haigh’s ethereal gay ghost story, “All of Us Strangers.” Both lost the award to Cillian Murphy, the star of Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer.”
The other out nominee in the film acting categories, previous four-time Golden Globe winner Jodie Foster, was competing in the Best Supporting Female Actor in Any Motion Picture for her performance in the Netflix biopic “Nyad,” but she lost to Da’Vine Joy Randolph of Alexander Payne’s “The Holdovers.”
On the TV side, out gay performer Matt Bomer, nominated as Best Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or TV Movie for Showtime’s queer historical romance “Fellow Travelers,” lost to Steven Yuen in the Netflix smash, “Beef.” Natasha Lyonne – who identifies as straight but has always been open about her bisexual attractions – was up for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy Series as the star of “Poker Face.” That award went instead to Ayo Edebiri of “The Bear.”
It’s true that Billie Eilish – who was nominated alongside brother Finneas O’Connell for co-writing Best Original Song nominee “What Was I Made For?” from “Barbie,” an award that they went on to win – has identified publicly as being attracted to both males and females, something she recently reasserted in a Variety interview (before following up with an Instagram post commenting that “literally who cares” about her sexuality), so at least there was one winner from the queer community during the evening.
As for the movies and shows themselves, several of the nominated titles included queer characters and themes, with Best Picture nominees “Maestro” (about bisexual composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein) and “May December” (from pioneering “New Queer Cinema” filmmaker Todd Haynes) as the most obvious examples. Both films received multiple nods; neither walked away with a single win. In the TV division, several queer-oriented shows, from “Fellow Travelers” to “The Last of Us” to “Ted Lasso,” lost in their respective categories, and “Wanda Sykes: I’m An Entertainer,” the out lesbian comedian’s Netflix special nominated for the newly added Best Standup Performance category, lost to former Golden Globes host Ricky Gervais’ “Ricky Gervais: Apocalypse.”
There were few queer moments of note, in fact, during the event, though the presence of trans “Euphoria” star Hunter Schaefer onstage as a presenter was a welcome nod to inclusion. A more positive spin can be found by acknowledging the show of diversity – an issue around which the Golden Globes has long been criticized, deservedly – among the winners. Several acting wins went to Black performers (Randolph, Edebiri) and performers of Asian descent (Yuen and “Beef” co-star Ali Wong), while Lily Gladstone became the first indigenous American performer to win a Golden Globe as Best Leading Female Actor (Motion Picture Drama) for “Killers of the Flower Moon.” (Note: Gladstone has identified as “middle-gendered” in subsequent interviews and uses she/they pronouns.) We can only be thrilled for these well-deserved wins.
Still if the Golden Globes are – as they’ve long been considered – the official “kick-off” of Awards Season and an important (if not always accurate) indicator of the likeliest big contenders at the subsequent (and more prestigious) ceremonies to follow over the next few weeks, it looks like we might be on the road toward very “straight and narrow” Oscar night.
The complete list of nominees and winners can be found at the Golden Globes website.
The National LGBT Media Association represents 13 legacy publications in major markets across the country with a collective readership of more than 400K in print and more than 1 million + online. Learn more here: NationalLGBTMediaAssociation.com.
