THEY’RE GOLDEN
It’s ‘party’ over politics as the Golden Globes kick off awards season
TV sleuths Andy Samberg and Sandra Oh get ready to host tonight’s Golden Globes. Coverage starts on
Actress Sandra Oh wants to bring a lighter tone to the Golden Globes after last year’s awards show took a much more serious approach centred on the #MeToo movement.
Oh says she and fellow host Andy Samberg will provide a “moment of joy” on Sunday night. The two were first paired as award presenters during a comical set at the Emmys last year when Oh ripped up a winner’s envelope, referencing the 2017 Oscars La La Land slip-up before the duo pieced together the card and announced the actual winner. “I know when Andy and I were talking about the feeling that I really want to bring and really focus on, is just to have a moment of joy,” said Oh, an Ottawa native who is favoured to win a Golden Globe for Best Actress for Killing Eve. “Honestly, with who is going to be in that audience, the nominees this year, it excites me so tremendously … mostly because of the diversity in that room.”
Samberg, who hosted the 2015 Emmys, shares a Saturday Night Live bloodline with recent hosts Seth Meyers (2018), Jimmy Fallon (2017), and Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, who memorably co-hosted from 2013 to 2015.
He believes this year’s pairing — two TV sleuths, as Samberg is a New York detective on Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Oh plays an intelligence officer pursuing an assassin on Killing Eve — offers a refreshing twist.
“I’m so excited to be doing it with Sandra,” who’s known to many viewers from her years on Grey’s Anatomy, Samberg said. “I feel like that’s going to make it feel different, new and exciting.” The Globes writers room opened while Brooklyn was still shooting, so Samberg acknowledged his busy schedule last month. “Yeah, we’ve got to write some Star Is Born jokes, stat!”
The freewheeling, alcohol- friendly Globes, often touted as Hollywood’s party of the year, offer 14 movie and 11 TV awards determined by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a small group of entertainment industry journalists who wield outsize influence because of the Globes’ potential effect on Oscar front-runners and the highrated NBC platform.
Hollywood Foreign Press Association president Meher Tatna called last year’s ceremony an important moment in the TV and film industry, as many dressed in black in solidarity with the victims of sexual harassment.
But she said this year’s ceremony won’t be as politically charged.
Tatna said she hopes the Golden Globes can return to its roots as the “party of the year” by giving attendees an opportunity to “escape reality.”
“I think everybody is tired of politics and, maybe for one night, we can have fun and not worry about the state of the world,” Tatna said.
At tonight’s ceremony, Oscar winner Jeff Bridges will receive the Cecil B. DeMille Award for career achievement in film, while a new award for achievement in TV, the Carol Burnett Award, will first go (fittingly) to Burnett.
“It gives us two wonderful moments in this year’s show (and) Carol is obviously the perfect choice” for the inaugural TV award, said executive producer Barry Adelman.
“One of the things I love about the Globes is … where these big stars show they’re fans of other stars. There’s nobody in that room who doesn’t idolize (Burnett) in some way. It’s also going to be spectacular with Jeff Bridges, another person everyone in the room admires.”