The 80th edition of the movie and TV awards ceremony will be broadcast live Tuesday night from the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles, with comedian Jerrod Carmichael hosting for the first time.
While some big names are expected to attend, other A-listers have yet to confirm if they’ll grace the event, which is seen as the first ceremony of the hotly anticipated awards season.
Jamie Lee Curtis, Ana De Armas, Salma Hayek, Billy Porter, Natasha Lyonne, Niecy Nash-Betts, Quentin Tarantino and Michaela Jaé Rodriguez will appear on the big night to present awards. But Margot Robbie, Brad Pitt and Daniel Craig have not indicated if they’ll be there or not.
Nominees who will not be in attendance include Abbott Elementary’s Quinta Brunson and Only Murders in the Building stars Selena Gomez, Steve Martin and Martin Short, as they will be busy on the sets of their respective shows. Brendan Gleeson of The Banshees of Inisherin, which is up for eight awards, will also miss the ceremony because he is filming Joker: Folie à Deux.
One reason some stars might be staying away is the past boycotts against the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), which votes for and hosts the Golden Globes.
The 2022 ceremony was not telecast after people decided to boycott the event because of the HFPA’s lack of diversity. The HFPA had not accepted a new Black member since Meher Tatna, its president in 2002, and not one of its 87 members from 55 countries was Black.
The HFPA was also marred by accusations of corruption and bribery, including the revelation that 39 of its members were gifted a set visit to Netflix’s Emily in Paris and two nights stay in a five-star hotel.
Major celebrities, PR firms, streaming services and studios wrote to the HFPA, calling for it to make reforms.
Tom Cruise even returned his three Golden Globe Awards for his performances in Born on the Fourth of July, Jerry Maguire and Magnolia. His most recent film, Top Gun: Maverick, is nominated in the best drama category.
One celebrity who will definitely not be there is best actor nominee Brendan Fraser, who is expected to sweep the honors coming this awards season for his performance in The Whale. He has accused former HFPA President Philip Berk of sexually assaulting him in 2003 and said he was blacklisted from Hollywood for speaking out.
In 2021, Berk was ousted from the top job after 44 years as an HFPA member following an email he sent to fellow members about the Black Lives Matter movement. The email reportedly copied and pasted text from an article that described BLM as a “racist hate movement” whose supporters were “race rioters [who] burned buildings and terrorized communities.”
Despite the controversies, the Golden Globes remains an important “cog in the wheel of awards season” and have “been around Hollywood for 80 years,” according to Deadline columnist Pete Hammond. “You can’t buy tradition,” he wrote.
This year’s ceremony is likely to be far less glitzy than in the years before the pandemic and the HFPA boycotts.
“They are going to be muted. There’s no after-parties to go to. There’s none of that. They’re not spending big bucks, the studios, on all of this,” Hammond said.
Despite this, there’s a lot of pressure for the Golden Globes to hit it out of the park with the ceremony. Broadcast partner NBC negotiated only a one-year contract, meaning it could walk away from the ceremony next year if it doesn’t pull in the ratings.
This year, stars can expect to be asked on the red carpet about the HFPA’s controversies rather than traditional questions about their outfits.
Hammond said they will be asked things such as “Do you feel comfortable being here?” and “Are you satisfied they’ve made all the changes?”
“It’s not going to be exclusively ‘What are you wearing?’” he wrote.
Director Steven Spielberg is expected to win the best drama award for his autobiographical film, The Fabelmans, which is up for six awards.
Eddie Murphy is expected to get some laughs when he accepts the Cecil B. DeMille Award, and TV producer Ryan Murphy will receive the Carol Burnett Award.
The Golden Globes will air live on Tuesday at 8 p.m. ET on NBC, NBC.com and Peacock.