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Golden Globes: Expect women in black, 'Get Out' in comedy

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association's Golden Globes don't matter - except when they do.

Late-night star Seth Meyers will host the75th annual Golden Globe Awards on NBC on Sunday, Jan. 7
Late-night star Seth Meyers will host the75th annual Golden Globe Awards on NBC on Sunday, Jan. 7Read moreLloyd Bishop/NBC
    by Ellen Gray
    Published 

The most important thing to know about the Golden Globes, whose 75th awards air Sunday (8 p.m., NBC), is that the awards themselves aren't the important part.

It's the show that matters.

A creation of the eccentric Hollywood Foreign Press Association, whose members vote on the awards and annually endure ribbing  about it from  hosts (and even otherwise grateful recipients), the Globes are the awards show we sometimes wish the Oscars could be. Not only can anything happen — people get drunk, the TelePrompTer goes out, winners are in the bathroom when their names are called — but that anything usually takes place before most of the audience has gone to bed.

Last year's Academy Awards, which ended with the wrong winner being announced for best picture, had its own Golden Globes moment. But how many people saw it happen live?

A few other things to know about Sunday's Globes:

  1. Late Night's Seth Meyers is hosting, so expect some Trump jokes. But Hollywood politics will also be a factor, he told People magazine. "Going into it, our focus is far more on the worlds that make these films and less on anything that's happening in Washington."

  2. Globes are awarded for movies and television, so the opportunity to see people you might recognize rubbing (and bending) elbows in the Beverly Hilton ballroom is even greater.

  3. Jordan Peele's scary, searing Get Out is nominated as a comedy, not a drama. (Don't blame the Hollywood Foreign Press for that, says Variety — distributor Universal chose the category. )

  4. Globes voters dearly love an accent, which can make it easier to handicap winners.

  5. Though the Globes are far enough away from the Emmys to be seen as any kind of indicator, the HFPA can draw attention to deserving shows that Television Academy voters might not consider, as it did for Amazon's Mozart in the Jungle in 2016, naming it best TV comedy or musical and bestowing an acting Globe on Gael Garcia Bernal.  Amazon's in the running this year for another comedy, Amy Sherman-Palladino's The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, nominated for comedy series and for star Rachel Brosnahan.

  6. The black dresses we'll see on the red carpet Sunday mean something more than a move back to basics. Actresses in black are likely to be in solidarity with Time's Up, the anti-sexual harassment campaign headed by a group of actresses and producers that includes Grey's Anatomy creator Shonda Rhimes, Reese Witherspoon, America Ferrera, Eva Longoria, and others.