Fresh from its sweep at the European Film awards on Saturday, Jacques Audiard’s daring crime musical Emilia Pérez has dominated the Golden Globe nominations in Hollywood, taking 10, including nods for best comedy or musical, best director, and for its leading performer, Karla Sofía Gascón.
Gascón plays a Mexican cartel kingpin in the film who transitions to a woman in order to fulfil her dream – and evade the local mafia. Should she win, Gascón will be the first trans actor to take a film Golden Globe; three years ago, Michaela Jaé Rodriguez triumphed for her role in TV show Pose.
Meanwhile Brady Corbet’s epic postwar drama The Brutalist, starring Adrien Brody as a Hungarian Holocaust survivor who becomes an architect in the US, followed with seven nominations, including for Corbet, Brody and his co-star Felicity Jones.
Conclave, the papal thriller directed by Edward Berger was helped by nods for its script, direction and leading actor Ralph Fiennes to third place on the scorecard, with six, while daring body horror The Substance and Cannes Palme d’Or winner Anora both took five.
Fiennes and Brody are set to face off in the leading actor category against Daniel Craig, for his turn in Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown, Sebastian Stan for Trump biopic The Apprentice and Colman Domingo for prison drama Sing Sing.
Hugh Grant is also in contention for his show-stopping role as a Mormon-baiter in horror film Heretic; Grant’s last major awards win was three decades ago, when the Globes named him best actor in a comedy or musical for Four Weddings and a Funeral.
Heretic is competing in the comedy or musical category this year, which means Grant is up against the likes of Jesse Eisenberg for A Real Pain, Jesse Plemons for Kinds of Kindness, Gabriel LaBelle for Saturday Night and Stan again for A Different Man.
This is not the first time an actor has been nominated in both lead performance categories, although Kate Winslet did similar double duty in 2009, when she won both the leading actress in a drama gong for Revolutionary Road and the supporting actress prize for The Reader.
Winslet is also in contention for two awards this year, thanks to roles in Lee Miller biopic Lee and in HBO political satire The Regime. The TV categories were particularly kind to British and Irish stars, with Keira Knightley, Colin Farrell, Andrew Scott, Gary Oldman, Eddie Redmayne and Ewan McGregor attracting nods for their work in, respectively, Black Doves, The Penguin, Ripley, Slow Horses, The Day of the Jackal and A Gentleman in Moscow.
The migration of movie stars to streaming and the small screen was further evidenced by the presence of Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett, Jodie Foster, Javier Bardem and Jake Gyllenhaal on the TV shortlists. The Bear again led small screen nominations, with five, while Shōgun and Only Murders in the Building each trailed with four.
Selena Gomez’s nod for the latter – as well as being one of Emilia Perez’s two shots for supporting actress – takes the number of double nominees this year to three. Steve Martin’s fourth consecutive nomination for the same show marks his ninth Globes nod; he is yet to win.
Although Netflix was the studio with the most nominees this year across both film and TV, one of its small screen crown jewels – Baby Reindeer – took a slightly disappointing three nods, while its hit adaptation of the David Nicholls novel One Day was overlooked entirely.
Wicked, the musical adaptation currently storming the box office, received nominations for both its lead, Cynthia Erivo, and support Ariana Grande. It also found recognition in the still fairly new “cinematic and box office achievement” category, as did Gladiator II, whose supporting actor, Denzel Washington, proved to be that film’s only other nomination – and the actor’s 11th.
Washington also produced August Wilson adaptation The Piano Lesson, which had been hoped to secure nods for Malcolm Washington’s direction, as well as lead performances by John David Washington and Danielle Deadwyler, but came away empty-handed.
As well as Gascón, Erivo faces competition from Amy Adams for Nightbitch, Anora’s Mikey Madison, Zendaya for Challengers and Demi Moore for The Substance. Moore’s comeback performance is mirrored in the dramatic categories by that of Pamela Anderson, who is nominated for The Last Showgirl, alongside Winslet, Angelina Jolie for Maria, Tilda Swinton for The Room Next Door, Nicole Kidman for Babygirl and Fernanda Torres for I’m Still Here.
But there was no love for Marianne Jean-Baptiste’s performance in Hard Truths or Saoirse Ronan in The Outrun. Also shut out were Steve McQueen’s Blitz and Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu, while September 5 and Nickel Boys performed less well than expected, with just one nomination each – albeit for best drama.
They compete against Conclave, The Brutalist and two Chalamet films – A Complete Unknown and Dune: Part Two. Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi smash otherwise went rather under appreciated by Globes voters, who offered it just one other nomination, for best score. Meanwhile Wicked, Anora, Challengers, A Real Pain, The Substance and Emilia Pérez vie for best musical or comedy.
Two innovations announced on Monday suggest the Globes are further attempting to position themselves as credible rivals to the Oscars. For the first time, the organisers are planning a pre-awards luncheon to celebrate their first-time nominees – which this year include Brody, Plemons, Anderson, Zoe Saldana, Seth Meyers, Richard Gadd, Kathryn Hahn and Glen Powell.
They will also host a standalone ceremony for the recipients of their lifetime achievement awards, with video highlights of Viola Davis and Ted Danson picking up their Cecil B DeMille and Carol Burnett honours then played during the main ceremony. This mirrors the Academy Awards’ strategy with their annual Governors awards, which in 2024 recognised Richard Curtis and Quincy Jones.
Last year’s Globes were the first since the widely discredited Hollywood Foreign Press Association disbanded in 2023, and featured a much wider and more diverse pool of voters than in previous years. Oppenheimer took five awards, while Barbie, The Holdovers, Anatomy of a Fall and Poor Things all trailed with two, while host Jo Koy won some of the worst reviews of any awards ceremony host in recent memory.
This year’s host, comedian Nikki Glaser (whose standup special is also nominated), will preside over the 5 January ceremony, a month and a half before the Baftas on 16 February, which will again be hosted by David Tennant. The Oscars follow a fortnight later, with Conan O’Brien taking over emcee duties from Jimmy Kimmel.