24 Golden Globes Snubs and Surprises: ‘Wicked’ Misses for Director, ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ Apparently Isn’t Funny and More
The nominees for the 82nd edition of the Golden Globes took place bright and early on Monday, dominated by “Emilia Pérez” and “The Brutalist,” with some surprises as well, such as Pamela Anderson’s nomination in the drama actress category for “The Last Showgirl.” Mindy Kaling and Morris Chestnut announced the nominees, and Nikki Glaser will host the ceremony on Jan. 5 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, which will be broadcast on CBS.
Among the highlights this year are double nominations for Sebastian Stan and Kate Winslet and two women nominees in the directing category. And of course, the Globes are still the Globes, so there were some fun head-scratchers too, like the lack of support for several films centered on Black stories, like “Sing Sing,” “The Piano Lesson” and “Hard Truths.” Below, we delve into the news of the morning.
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Pamela Anderson earns her first Golden Globe nomination for “The Last Showgirl”
In what is rapidly becoming one of the best narratives of awards season this year, Pamela Anderson won her first major awards nomination ever for her performance as a veteran Las Vegas showgirl coping with the sudden closing of her show. Already nominated for the Gotham Awards, Anderson has vaulted into the top echelon of awards season, and it’s so delightful to see!
“Sing Sing” misses nominations for film drama, supporting actor and screenplay
“Sing Sing” is easily one of the best, most affecting movies of this year, utilizing a cast made up almost entirely of former inmates at the titular maximum security prison to tell the story of how its Rehabilitation Through the Arts program saved their lives. But while Colman Domingo — the film’s lead, and one of its only professional actors — did earn a nomination for best actor in a drama, the film missed out on nominations for picture, supporting actor for Clarence Maclin (one of the formerly incarcerated performers) and screenplay for Clint Bentley and director Greg Kwedar. In a year in which many nominees — ”Emilia Pérez,” “The Substance,” “Challengers,” “Anora” — had the literal and metaphorical volume cranked up to 11, “Sing Sing” perhaps proved too gentle and quiet for Globes voters.
Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Danielle Deadwyler overlooked for “Hard Truths” and “The Piano Lesson”
For months, critics and awards pundits have been trumpeting the performances by Marianne Jean-Baptiste in Mike Leigh’s “Hard Truths,” as a depressed Londoner, and Danielle Deadwyler in Malcolm Washington’s adaptation of August Wilson’s play “The Piano Lesson,” as a woman with a fierce connection to her family’s ancestral piano. While both women have earned nominations elsewhere — Jean-Baptiste for the Gothams, Deadwyler for the Gothams and Indie Spirits — the Globes overlooked them both.
Sebastian Stan double-nominated for “The Apprentice” and “A Different Man”
Even before Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election, “The Apprentice” was the most controversial movie of the year, with virtually every U.S. distributor acceding to Trump’s attempts to block the film’s release despite the rave reviews for the movie out of the Cannes Film Festival. (It was ultimately picked up by Briarcliff Entertainment.) The Globes had no such qualms, it seems, handing its star, Sebastian Stan, the rare double nomination, drama actor for his performance as Trump as a younger man and musical/comedy actor for “A Different Man,” in which Stan plays a facially disfigured actor with neurofibromatosis who undergoes a radical treatment that makes him look like Sebastian Stan.
Ryan Reynolds and “Deadpool and Wolverine” miss out on musical/comedy nominations, but “The Penguin” and “Agatha All Along” honored in TV category
In 2016, both “Deadpool” and star Ryan Reynolds were nominated in the musical/comedy category, largely because both the movie and Reynolds’ performance were actually funny. This year, however, the biggest superhero film of the year was recognized only in the box office achievement category. All was not lost for superhero storytelling, though. DC’s limited series “The Penguin” for HBO did earn some major Globes love, with nominations for best series, actor (Colin Farrell) and actress (Cristin Milioti), and “Agatha All Along” star Kathryn Hahn also made it into the actress in a TV musical/comedy category.
Kate Winslet earns double nominations for film and TV
Kate Winslet worked for years to get “Lee” made, her biopic about the war photographer Lee Miller, which she also produced. That hard work paid off this morning when Winslet received a nomination for best actress in a drama. At the same time, Winslet scored a surprise nomination for lead actress in a limited TV series for “The Regime,” which premiered on HBO earlier this year, and for which she did not receive an Emmy nomination.
Two women, Coralie Fargeat and Payal Kapadia, nominated for best director, while directors of two of the year’s biggest films, “Wicked” and “Dune: Part Two,” overlooked
Although going into this year it looked very likely that no women directors would be nominated — unlike last year when both Greta Gerwig ( “Barbie”) and Celine Song ( “Past Lives”) received directing nominations — two women did break into this category. The first, “The Substance” writer-director Coralie Fargeat, was less of a surprise; she won best screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival, and her outrageously entertaining movie, about a faded movie star who takes a drug to give birth to a younger version of herself, was one of the year’s biggest honorees, with five nominations, including picture, screenplay, actress (Demi Moore) and supporting actress (Margaret Qualley). But virtually no one predicted the nomination for Payal Kapadia, director of “All We Imagine as Light” — the movie, about two nurses living in Mumbai, also earned a nomination for movie in a non-English language.
Meanwhile, both Jon M. Chu for “Wicked: Part 1” and Denis Villeneuve for “Dune: Part Two” — two gargantuan hit films that did earn nominations for best musical/comedy and best drama, respectively — missed out on nominations in this category. Given the vast creative and technical accomplishments of both movies, we’d chalk this up to the Globes being allergic to two-part movies, but the Globes did nominate Villeneuve for directing “Dune: Part One.” The Globes! Still weird after all these years!
Robert Downey Jr. misses for “The Sympathizer,” while Diego Luna nominated for “La Máquina”
Robert Downey Jr. may have lost the limited series supporting actor Emmy to Lamorne Morris for “Fargo,” but still, he played a million characters on “The Sympathizer,” and he’s Robert Downey Jr.! He won on this very stage last year as he began his sweep for “Oppenheimer” that led to the Oscars. We do love Diego Luna, and his nomination for Hulu’s Spanish-language boxing drama — as Andy, the plastic surgery-addicted, filler-faced best friend of Gael García Bernal’s Esteban — appears to have caught the voters’ attention.
Paul Mescal not nominated for “Gladiator II,” and no Saoirse Ronan for either of her roles
There was no luck for the Irish on Globes nominations morning. For his lead role in Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator II,” in which he fought off sharks in the Roman Colosseum, fer chrissakes, Paul Mescal did not receive a nomination. And despite Saoirse Ronan’s two attention-getting roles this year — one in Steve McQueen’s drama “Blitz” as a mother during World War II, the other in “The Outrun” as a woman trying to stay sober — her performances were overlooked as well.
Freshman comedy “Nobody Wants This” on Netflix earns multiple nominations
The Globes often can’t resist anointing a scrappy new comedy with a bevy of nominations (“Ugly Betty,” “Glee,” “Girls”), and this year, that honor has been bestowed on Erin Fosters’s interfaith romance “Nobody Wants This.” Millennial superstars Adam Brody and Kristen Bell were both nominated in the comedy acting categories as well, playing a Los Angeles rabbi and the shiksa (not that she’d know that word) object of his affection.
A lively, fun TV drama series category!
Bestill our hearts, this is a delightful grouping. Let’s just say that “Shōgun” — presumably and rightfully — is a lock here, since the FX drama already won the drama series Emmy, along with a slew of other awards. But a first-time nomination for the wonderful “Slow Horses,” for its fourth season? Yes, please. And nominations for Netflix’s “The Diplomat” and Prime Video’s “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” too? Heaven! The upcoming season of “Squid Game,” which drops on Netflix on Dec. 26, is a fun entry as well (which isn’t to call “Squid Game” fun, because … you know). And we love “The Day of the Jackal,” which scored Peacock’s first drama series Globe nomination (along with star Eddie Redmayne in the lead drama actor category). We want to take all of these shows out for drinks — would be a total blast. (Although this event would be slightly less fun without HBO’s “Industry,” which should have made it into this category for the first time for its breakout third season.)
“Fallout” totally skunked
The freshman season for Amazon Prime Video’s blockbuster video game adaptation, set in a post-nuclear warfare American Southwest, did earn major Emmy nominations for the show for best drama and for star Walton Goggins. But the Globes seemed to put its wacky sci-fi eggs in the “Squid Game,” giving the second season of the Netflix sensation a nomination for best drama.
Cooper Koch nominated for “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story,” but Nicholas Alexander Chavez overlooked
The phenomenon that is Ryan Murphy’s limited series “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story” got three nominations overall, in the series category, in supporting actor for Javier Bardem’s performance as the abusive father Jose Menendez — and for Cooper Koch in the lead actor category as Erik. Koch’s standout performance on the series reached its apex in its fifth episode, “The Hurt Man,” which plays out as one scene over 33 minutes when Erik is speaking with his lawyer Leslie Abramson (Ari Graynor). The episode is shot as a single take, with no edits or cuts, as Erik tells the story of being abused by his father, and it clearly (and correctly) got voters’ attention. Koch’s co-star Nicholas Alexander Chavez — as Lyle Menendez — wasn’t provided with a similar platform, and therefore didn’t receive a nomination.
“Shrinking” misses for TV Comedy, even though Jason Segel and Harrison Ford are nominated — while “The Gentlemen” gets TV Comedy and nothing else
The TV comedy category was mostly dominated by the shows that are now the usual suspects: “The Bear,” “Hacks,” “Abbott Elementary” and and “Only Murders in the Building.” As we note elsewhere in this list, Netflix’s “Nobody Wants This” also scored a first-time nomination — as did the streamer’s “The Gentleman,” from Guy Ritchie. Which is all well and good, but the Theo James-led comedy appeared nowhere else among the nominees! Always weird. Apple TV+’s “Shrinking” did not receive a nomination in the series category, but star (and co-creator) Jason Segel was nominated in the comedy lead actor category, and Harrison Ford received a nomination in supporting.
Hans Zimmer nominated for a film score ruled ineligible by Oscars
Zimmer’s stirring score for “Dune: Part Two” was ruled ineligible by both the Academy Awards and the BAFTAs because it apparently used too much music from the first “Dune” movie, the Globes had no such qualms, probably because the music totally rocks.
The box office achievement category continues to perplex
For its sophomore year, this category — meant to ensure that movies most people have actually seen do at least get some kind of awards recognition at the Globes — still managed to secure some curious choices. While no one really expected nominations for “Despicable Me 4,” “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” or “Kung Fu Panda 4” — all in the top 10 grossing films of the year domestically — it is surprising that “Dune: Part Two,” nominee for best drama of the year, was not also recognized in this category, while best musical/comedy nominee “Wicked” did earn a box office nod. Meanwhile, “Gladiator II” earned a spot here, even though, to date, “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” and “It Ends With Us” have both earned much more. More weirdness!
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