Golden Globes Diversity: Regina King, Chadwick Boseman Lead 2021 Nominees

In 2021, the most strikingly diverse category at the Golden Globe Awards is best director.

After a total of five female nominees over the past 77 years, this year women comprise the majority of the race: One Night in Miami’s Regina King, Nomadland’s Chloe Zhao and, in somewhat of a surprise, Promising Young Woman’s Emerald Fennell. King, a previous acting winner, becomes the second Black woman (after Ava DuVernay) to be nominated in the category, while Zhao (who like Fennell also picked up a nomination for best screenplay) is the first of Asian descent.

The racially diverse trio comes after the Hollywood Foreign Press Association has been criticized in recent years—including on its own stage—for snubbing a growing list of qualified woman contenders.

The acting categories were more of a mixed bag, with more than half of the 14 races populated exclusively by white people. Viola Davis (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom) and Andra Day (The United States vs. Billie Holliday), both competing for best actress in a motion picture, drama, are the only actresses of color nominated for the 78th annual Golden Globe Awards. (Day has an additional nomination for her film’s original song, “Tigress & Tweed.”)

Five Black actors received nominations. The late Chadwick Boseman (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom) has been recognized for best actor in a motion picture, drama, while Daniel Kaluuya (Judas and the Black Messiah) and Leslie Odom Jr. (One Night in Miami) face off in the supporting race. (Odom, although snubbed for his lead role in Hamilton, has a second nomination for ONIM’s original song “Speak Now.”) Meanwhile, in television, Don Cheadle (Black Monday) is competing in the musical/comedy race and John Boyega’s role in Steve McQueen’s anthology series Small Axe was placed in the supporting category.

If not for Disney+ streaming the filmed stage version of Hamilton, Latino performers would have been shut out altogether: Lin-Manuel Miranda received a nomination for best actor in a motion picture, musical/comedy.

He’ll be competing against Dev Patel (The Personal History of David Copperfield), who along with Riz Ahmed (Sound of Metal) in the motion picture, drama race are the two South Asian nominees this year.

Finally, a pair of MENA (Middle Eastern North African) actors received nominations Wednesday morning: Egyptian-American Ramy Youssef (Ramy) is the incumbent in the race for TV actor, musical/comedy, while French-Algerian Tahar Rahim (The Mauritanian) joins Ahmed and Boseman in motion picture, drama—tying best director for the most diverse category of the year, with three underrepresented nominees apiece.

The Golden Globe Awards ceremony is produced by Dick Clark Productions, a division of MRC, which is a co-owner of The Hollywood Reporter through a joint venture with Penske Media titled P-MRC.