CULTURE

Golden Globes 2019: All the Big Takeaways From the Nominations

Including an absolutely stacked best actress category.


Lady Gaga
Valerie Macon/AFP/Getty Images

In the wee hours of Thursday morning, Terry Crews, Danai Gurira, Leslie Mann, and Christian Slater gathered at the Beverly Hilton Hotel to announce the nominees for the 2019 Golden Globes, which will be broadcast live from the same swanky locale on January 6 and hosted by Andy Samberg and Sandra Oh. (Oh was nominated for her role in BBC America’s Killing Eve.) The nominations are decided by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and are often seen as a fairly good predictor of the subsequent Oscars race. Though they forebode big wins for Vice and A Star Is Born—pitting Lady Gaga against some of Hollywood’s biggest female powerhouses in the process—the nominations aren’t without the usual outrage-causing snubs.

Here are the biggest takeaways from this year’s Golden Globes nominations.

The Best Actress category is jam-packed.

It may be cliché to say that it’s an honor just to be listed alongside one’s fellow nominees, but that’s actually the case in the Best Actress in a Drama category. Gaga, who won a Globe in 2016 for her appearance in American Horror Story: Hotel, will go up against Glenn Close, Nicole Kidman, Melissa McCarthy, and Rosamund Pike. Notably missing from the category, however, was Amandla Stenberg, whose role in the timely The Hate U Give was well-received by critics and audiences alike.

Vice is no runner-up.

Adam McKay’s latest, a Dick Cheney biopic, hasn’t even had its wide release yet, but it’s already captured the hearts and minds of the HFPA. Vice leads the pack with six nominations, including nods for its acting, directing, and screenplay. Close behind are The Favourite, Green Book, and A Star Is Born, each of which received five nominations.

A brand-new award…

On Thursday, HFPA President Meher Tatna announced that the 2019 ceremony will feature a new honorary award for career achievement in television. The new award will essentially be the TV equivalent of the Cecil B. DeMille Award, which honors “outstanding contributions to the world of entertainment,” specifically within the film industry. The official name of the award has yet to be announced but, if the HFPA follows the tradition of the Cecil B. DeMille Award, it would be named after its first recipient.

Panther is on the prowl.

Black Panther received three nominations—for Best Drama, Best Original Score, and Best Original Song—but none of those included nods for Ryan Coogler’s directing, nor for Chadwick Boseman and Michael B. Jordan’s performances as King T’Challa (the titular Black Panther) and the villain Killmonger, respectively.

Maybe A Quiet Place was too quiet.

Though it received mountains of attention for its anxiety-inducing premise and, of course, the fact that it was helmed by husband-and-wife team Emily Blunt and John Krasinski, A Quiet Place received just one nomination, for Marco Beltrami’s original score. Blunt did, however, receive a nod for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy for her upcoming starring role in Mary Poppins Returns.

A royal shutout.

While Olivia Colman, Emma Stone, and Rachel Weisz all received nominations for their roles in the court intrigue The Favourite, Mary, Queen of Scots was completely snubbed by the Globes—despite it starring two previous Golden Globe favorites, Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie.

Atlanta won’t defend its title.

Another previous winner left in the lurch was FX’s Atlanta. The show won the awards for Best Comedy Series and Best Actor (for creator and star Donald Glover) in 2017, and though Glover received another nod for his role, the show wasn’t even included in the series category this time around. Even without that extra nomination, however, FX shot above all the streaming giants to receive the most nominations of any TV network, with 10, thanks to The Americans, Pose, and The Assassination of Gianni Versace, the latter of which received four noms, the most of any series.

Dystopian disillusionment.

Also among those snubs were a handful of TV series set in not-too-far-off dystopian futures. Hulu’s A Handmaid’s Tale, HBO’s Westworld, and Netflix’s Maniac were all left out of their respective series categories, though A Handmaid’s Tale and Westworld picked up one or two acting nominations each.

Related: The Most Insane Golden Globe Moments of All Time