Golden Globes Live Blog: Real-Time Takes on the HFPA, the Host and the Winners

After a year off the air due to controversy, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s Golden Globe Awards — which honor achievements in film and on television — are back on NBC on Tuesday evening, with the 80th edition emanating from the Beverly Hilton. Scott Feinberg, THR’s executive editor of awards, will be updating this post throughout the night with his take on the show. Follow along below!

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8:19 p.m. And thus ends the 80th Golden Globe Awards. Was the show entertaining? Intermittently. Did people bother to tune in on a Tuesday night? We’ll soon learn the ratings. Will the Globes ever be on television again? Stay tuned.

8:15 p.m. Quentin Tarantino presents best picture (drama) to … Spielberg’s The Fabelmans, a major win in a hotly contested category that also included four other plausible best picture Oscar winners: Avatar: The Way of Water, Elvis, Tár and Top Gun: Maverick. Well-deserved recognition for the maestro.

8:11 p.m. The Banshees of Inisherin wins best picture (musical/comedy) over Babylon, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery and Triangle of Sadness. Five years ago, another McDonagh-directed film, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, won best picture (drama).

8:06 p.m. Here comes the HFPA’s president, Helen Hoehne, touting “a year of momentous change for our organization.” Was it? Well, yes and no. The organization instituted rules that should have been there all along, like limiting the ability of members to accept lavish gifts and travel from people and companies they cover. They increased the minimum journalistic requirements for members to maintain membership status, but not enough to eliminate any existing members whose credentials were lacking. They increased the number of Black journalists in their organization — from zero to six. And they sold their organization so that it could be converted from a nonprofit into a for-profit, which will allow their members to be paid an annual salary of $75,000 for, well, you tell me, while not paying a dime to the new non-member voters who they have added to the Globes voting rolls to enable them to claim that the Globes electorate is now diverse.

8:04 p.m. Best TV drama goes to … HBO’s House of the Dragon, that show’s first and only win of the night. Wow.

8:00 p.m. ABC’s Abbott Elementary caps its huge night with a win for best TV comedy series. The last time a network show won this award? Nine years ago (Fox’s Brooklyn Nine-Nine).

7:58 p.m. Go figure: The Globes, who couldn’t be bothered to nominate the magnificent Yellowstone for anything other than best actor in a TV drama, have just presented that award to Yellowstone’s Kevin Costner! That show is worthy of that and a lot more awards love.

7:51 p.m. Very soft-spoken and gracious speech from Eddie Murphy — building up to a much funnier Will Smith reference than the earlier one!

7:36 p.m. HBO bounces right back with another big win of its own, best limited/anthology series or TV movie, for the second installment of The White Lotus, which predictably played very well with the international membership of the HFPA.

7:34 p.m. After a win by The Dropout’s Amanda Seyfried (in absentia) for best actress in a limited/anthology series or TV movie, Dahmer’s Evan Peters wins the corresponding award for an actor — a big win for him and Netflix.

7:30 p.m. Texts are coming in about Carmichael’s “awful” and “tasteless” crack about the Beverly Hilton as “the hotel that killed Whitney Houston.”

7:23 p.m. The inimitable Jennifer Coolidge bags best supporting actress in a limited/anthology series or TV movie category for her second season of The White Lotus. What a character, on the show and in life! Aaand … she just spoiled the show!

7:20 p.m. You know who’s a great actor and a great guy? Paul Walter Hauser, who just won best supporting actor in a limited/anthology series or TV movie for his outstanding work in Apple’s Black Bird. So glad that he has gotten a role worthy of his talents and well-deserved recognition for his work in it.

7:18 p.m. I can’t see or hear Ana Gasteyer, who is now presenting with Nicole Byer, without thinking about Schweddyy Balls.

7:09 p.m. Congratulations to the legendary Steven Spielberg on winning best director for his autobiographical film The Fabelmans. It’s a huge win over Banshees’ McDonagh, Avatar: The Way of Water’s James Cameron (who won this award for the first Avatar), Elvis’ Baz Luhrmann and Everything Everywhere All at Once’s Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. Spielberg’s willingness to attend the Globes, despite the HFPA’s recent controversy, may have helped to save the Globes, and the Globes’ decision to celebrate Spielberg, at a time when he seems perpetually underappreciated (it’s been 24 years since he last won a competitive Oscar or Globe), may have given a big boost to his best director Oscar prospects.

7:06 p.m. Martin McDonagh wins best screenplay for The Banshees of Inisherin, five years after winning the same award for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. That’s two for Banshees, after Farrell’s win. (And one for one of this season’s THR’s Writer Roundtable participants.)

6:59 p.m. Following an introduction by Sean Penn, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky — to whom Penn recently gifted one of his two Oscars  — appears via video and addresses the audience: “There will be no third world war. It is not a trilogy. Ukraine will stop the Russian aggression on Ukrainian land.”

6:55 p.m. We have our first big upset of the night in the best non-English language film category: Argentina’s Argentina, 1985 beats Germany’s All Quiet on the Western Front (the Oscar frontrunner), India’s RRR (Oscar-snubbed but a huge blockbuster), Belgium’s Close and South Korea’s Decision to Leave (critics’ darlings). While this result is unlikely to recur on Oscar night, it could help put Argentina, 1985 over the top, in terms of landing an Oscar nomination.

6:54 p.m. Blanchett holds court, winning best actress (drama) — but, of the neck-and-neck Oscar contenders, Yeoh wins the night, as Yeoh gave a lovely speech, whereas Blanchett couldn’t be there.

6:52 p.m. Carmichael takes a dig at another absent star, Will Smith. Seemed to fall very flat.

6:35 p.m. Longtime Globes darling Ryan Murphy is presented with the Carol Burnett Award for career achievement in TV by his Pose star Billy Porter. He starts a gracious speech by acknowledging another star of Pose, Michaela Jaé Rodriguez, who became the first trans winner of a Globe last year when the Globes were off the air; then other past collaborators who have overcome adversity — including Niecy Nash-Betts, Matt Bomer and Jeremy Pope — noting, “It’s hard being an LGBTQ kid in America.”

6:34 p.m. Carmichael jokes that he took Kanye West to see Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans and it changed Kanye.

6:26 p.m. Zendaya wins best actress (TV drama) for Euphoria but isn’t there. Julia Garner wins best supporting actress for Ozark, picking up her first Globe for the Netflix drama’s final season. She could win another before the end of the night, as she’s also nominated for best actress in a limited or anthology series or TV movie for her performance on another Netflix show, Inventing Anna.

6:25 p.m. Carmichael goes after the absent Tom Cruise, suggesting that they exchange the three Globes statuettes that Cruise returned (in protest of the lack of diversity within the HFPA) for Scientologist Shelly Miscavige. Mean or fair? We report, you decide.

6:17 p.m. That’s a huge win for Elvis’ Austin Butler (who greeted his Once Upon a Time in Hollywood collaborators en route to the stage). One can probably describe it as a slight upset over Brendan Fraser, who was the early frontrunner for his performance in The Whale — although Fraser’s movie was not nearly as well received as Butler’s, and Fraser hasn’t exactly endeared himself to the HFPA by continuing to slam and boycott them for the alleged misconduct of former HFPA president Philip Berk. Anyway, remember this: Rami Malek‘s road to the best actor Oscar for Bohemian Rhapsody — another music-filled biopic that competed at the Globes in the drama categories, even though it could have gone into the musical/comedy categories — started at the Globes. So, too, Butler’s? (For more Butler content, check out our THR Actor Roundtable — he’s now the third of our six participants to have won a Globe tonight!)

6:15 p.m. Netflix is on the board with a best animated feature win for Guillermo del Toro for, well, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, five years after his best director win for The Shape of Water.

6:04 p.m. Congratulations to Michelle Yeoh, who joins her Everything Everywhere All at Once co-star Quan in the winners’ circle. Tár’s Cate Blanchett is expected to win best actress (drama), which will further indicate that the best actress Oscar race is probably between these two powerhouses, with The Fabelmans’ Michelle Williams a possible spoiler. I don’t know how one can choose.

6:01 p.m. That best actor (musical/comedy) win for The Banshees of Inisherin’s Colin Farrell marks his second Golden Globe win — 14 years after his first, which came for his first collaboration with Banshees helmer Martin McDonagh, In Bruges. (He’s another lad who was part of our THR Actor Roundtable that posted Tuesday.)

5:53 p.m. Quinta Brunson, creator and star of ABC’s Abbott Elementary, follows her co-star Tyler James Williams to an acting win: best actress (TV musical/comedy) and best supporting actor. That’s already more acknowledgment for network TV performances in the first hour of the Globes telecast than occurred during the entirety of the 2022 Emmys telecast.

5:48 p.m. Yes, Chef! Jeremy Allen White’s best actor (TV musical/comedy) win for FX’s The Bear is the sort of result that the Globes are famous for: getting behind a rookie show — or contender from one — before any other organization can. (The Bear debuted after last year’s Emmys eligibility window.) Whenever possible, they like to be first, for better (Sex and the City, Girls, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, etc.) or worse (Mozart in the Jungle, etc.).

5:38 p.m. “Naatu Naatu,” the song from the Indian blockbuster RRR that has literally had people dancing in the aisles of cinemas around the world, just won best original song over tunes by Rihanna, Swift and Lady Gaga. In years past, the HFPA would not have been able to resist the sort of star power of the pop stars. This year, though, Globes winners were determined by a roughly equal number of HFPA members and non-member voters, the latter a new addition to try to increase the diversity of the electorate, and comprised largely of journalists based outside of the U.S. I suspect that they helped to tip the scales in this contest, among others.

5:36 p.m. Happy for the best original score winner, Babylon’s Justin Hurwitz, who is now four-for-four at the Globes, having won song and score for La La Land and score for First Man. I doubt that anyone else has accumulated that many Globes by the age of just 37! And people can argue about Babylon, but not about its score, which is amazing.

5:31 p.m. The Beverly Hilton’s International Ballroom is always star-studded, to one degree or another, on Globes night, but every so often a star — often from the music world, which doesn’t always overlap with the worlds of film and TV — shows up who is so big that even the other stars perk up and take notice. I was in the room when that happened with Prince, Taylor Swift and Beyoncé. And I’m told it’s happening right now with Rihanna.

5:22 p.m. The random piano playing. Carmichael yelling at the audience to “Shut the fuck up.” Jennifer Coolidge giving a bizarre speech en route to presenting an award. Oh, yes, the Golden Globes are back, baby.

5:13 p.m. As with Quan in the best supporting actor category, the presumptive Oscar frontrunner in the best supporting actress category has also won the corresponding Golden Globe: congratulations to Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’s Angela Bassett.

5:10 p.m. Everyone in the room and at home is happy for the newly crowned best supporting actor winner, Everything Everywhere All at Once’s Ke Huy Quan, who was a child actor, then left the business due to a lack of parts for Asian actors, and then auditioned for the first time in 25 years for Everything Everywhere All at Once. (For more great Quan content, I refer you to THR’s Actor Roundtable that posted this morning.)

5:02 p.m. Carmichael takes the stage and immediately goes there: “I’m here ’cause I’m Black… [the HFPA] didn’t have a single Black member until George Floyd died.” He also says that he was paid $500,000 to host — he may have been joking, but if he wasn’t, that’s way more than anyone else has ever been paid to host an awards show, as far as I know. I’ll be curious to hear how his slow, quiet, deadpan, seated-on-the-stage delivery is playing for others. (One thing he got wrong: “They haven’t had a Black host in 79 years.” Actually, Louis Gossett Jr. was one of three hosts of the show in 1993.)

4:50 p.m. I’ll be weighing in on tonight’s telecast not from the International Ballroom of the Beverly Hilton, from which I’ve usually covered the Globes, but from my living room couch due to the thin skin of the HFPA — and I’m not alone. This group of journalists decided not to invite back a sizable group of journalists — including my counterparts at Deadline, Variety, Vanity Fair, Gold Derby and TheWrap — ostensibly because we belong to the Critics Choice Association, which puts on another awards show, the Critics Choice Awards, but really, I think, because they didn’t appreciate our coverage of their controversy. Anyway, it’s their party and they can cry if they want to!

4:40 p.m. We are T-minus 20 minutes until showtime. The actor/stand-up comic Jerrod Carmichael is set to host tonight’s show. It’s a particularly tough assignment in a year in which many expect the emcee to roast the eminently roastable HFPA in the way that Ricky Gervais used to — but in which the stakes are also incredibly high for the HFPA, given that the Globes are also auditioning for their future. Remember, the HFPA/NBC broadcasting deal with NBC ends when tonight’s ceremony does, and awards shows are no longer as appealing as they used to be to TV networks. Food for thought: the SAG Awards, which also recognize work in film and TV, but only actors, are essentially the Golden Globes without the other, less sexy categories, and without the controversy … and they haven’t been able to find a broadcasting partner this year!