The Golden Globes on Sunday night didn’t have a high bar. Nikki Glaser, this year’s emcee, could barely do worse after Jo Koy, last year’s host, famously flopped. However, she wasn’t satisfied with just performing better. She practiced her opening monologue for dozens of club performances over the holidays, and when it came time, she wowed the crowd at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California, and captured the attention of social media users. With a combination of anticipated and unexpected winners, the remainder of the evening proceeded largely without incident. But if there weren’t some genuinely off-kilter moments, it wouldn’t be an awards ceremony. Here are our observations on the highs and lows.
Best Host: Nikki Glaser
“Don’t be scared to be weird,” Glaser advised her writing team as she started preparing her Golden Globes monologue in early December.
Her excellent monologue on Sunday, which had the hard-hitting jokes she is known for—such as a smart jab at Paramount+ and a joke about how Sean Combs’s imprisonment affected the after-party—was proof of this. However, it also seemed like Adam Sandler was joining in on the ridiculous pronunciation of Timothée Chalamet’s name. Although Glaser doesn’t typically perform impressions, she did so and it went incredibly well, contributing to the lively and joyous atmosphere to start the evening.
She listed a few nominees, including “Wicked,” “Queer,” and “Nightbitch,” and then added, “Not just things Ben Affleck yells after sex.” If there was one joke that smashed every test run, it was definitely the one where she said it. It killed again on Sunday. — Jason Zinoman
Glaser’s evening began on the red carpet wearing a voluminous gold ball gown without straps. She changed into a silver sleeveless gown embellished with sequins for her first appearance on stage. She was wearing her third dress of the evening by 8:30. She was wearing Dress No. 5, a pink sleeveless gown adorned with sequins, an hour into the event. She had on what felt like forty-seven more by the end of the evening. Was it all missing? A parody of Demi Moore’s widely shared yellow song “Substance” would have been amazing.
