Snubs and unexpected wins: Golden Globes nominees revealed

0:02Hi, I'm Charlie Duffield and welcome back to The Standard Podcast.

0:30a bit more exciting and different and offbeat. So yeah, I think there'll be some fun celeb moments from the night for sure. But first, film awards season may seem a while away, but in fact, the first nominations have just been unveiled. The Golden Globes are the first major Hollywood honors to reveal their shortlists, effectively kicking off a film awards season that will last until the Oscars in March. Netflix drama series Adolescence the Smashing Machine actress Emily Blunt and Hamnet actor Paul Mescal are among the British and Irish nominees for the 2026 Golden Globe Awards. And as well as recognising film and television, a new category for Best Podcast has been introduced this year.

1:17Plus, Helen Mirren, the British actor who is already the winner of awards including an Oscar, four BAFTAs, three Golden Globes, five Emmys and a Tony will receive the Cecil B. Demille Golden Globe for Lifetime Achievement Award. But how significant are the Golden Globes? They're affectionately referred to as the drunk uncle of awards season and are less formal than the Oscars. However, they're still important. Actors, films and TV shows are nominated for Golden Globes by a group of international entertainment journalists. But the winners had the chance to get on the radar of far more Academy voters for the Oscars, as the event is televised on a major US broadcast network.

1:59Last year's Golden Globe wins gave a significant boost of momentum to actors such as Fernando Torres and Sebastian Stan, with films such as I'm Still Here and Flo going on to win Oscars. But the big winner in 2024 was Oppenheimer, which took home five awards, including the top prize of Best Drama. The Golden Globes are also renowned for roasting celebrities, with the opening monologues from previous hosts such as Ricky Gervais, Seth Meyers, Tina Fey and Amy Pulher often providing some of the most viral moments of the night. After a corruption scandal in 2021, the Globes struggled to book good hosts, but last year US comic Nikki Glaser delivered a monologue poking fun at stars such as Sundiah, Ben Affleck, Selena Gomez, Eddie Redmayne and Glenn Powell.

2:48She later delivered a musical mash-up of Wicked and Conclave called Popula. You will be popular. You're gonna be popular. I'll teach you some Catholic present. Oh, sorry, what? Wait, this sucks? Wait, this whole thing sucks? I'm embarrassing myself in front of Elton John? She'll return to host this year's Golden Globes ceremony, which will take place in Los Angeles on the 11th of January, 2026. To find out more, I spoke to The Standards culture writer and commissioning editor, Vicky Jessup. Vicky, can you talk us through this year's nominations? I guess there are a lot of nominations because the Golden Globes covers both film and TV.

3:38There are some main contenders that have gotten buzz all through the year and even for upcoming films. We've got K-pop Demon Hunters, which got a nod for like best motion picture and I think best song. We've got the big ticket Hollywood shows. So Begonia, which is the Yorgos Lanthomas dark comedy, where Desi Plemons got a nod for that. Wicked, obviously, like that was one of the big ones going into this award season, you know, last year. It got nominated for some awards, snubbed for others. So we were all curious to see whether it would get awards or nominations this time round. We have One Battle After Another, which is the kind of Leonardo DiCaprio, kind of like a B-movie, but basically just a fast-paced kind of action film where Leonardo DiCaprio faces off against Sean Penn as a corrupt military colonel pursuing his daughter.

4:28That got surprisingly good reviews. And in terms of fuzzy new releases, we've got Frankenstein. We've got Hamlet. It hasn't even come out and it's already getting awards nominations, which is kind of wild. And we've got Sinners. We've got Marty Supreme. So I'd be surprised if Timothee Chalamet didn't kind of ride that buzz all the way to the Oscars. And in terms of television, I think we all kind of knew Adolescents would do well. It was such a massive event when that show came out. It's got some awards nominations here. We've got Severance, the second season of that aired at the start of the year.

5:00Slow Horses, obviously The White Lotus, the third season of that aired this year. So quite a lot to be getting on with, to be honest. Okay, but what do you mean by a B movie? I guess I mean, it's not like a kind of prestige, awards-based, like, what's the word, like high-concept film. It's kind of a bit dirty and fast and loose. It's just like a bit of fun, basically. It's a thriller, an action blockbuster. So I think sometimes when those come out, maybe people don't expect them to be anything more than a bit of a good time and a bit of fun. But this actually proved to be surprisingly good. So were there any big surprises or shocks this year?

5:32Yeah, so Wicked, I suppose I mentioned earlier that people were kind of waiting to see whether or not it would get awards nominations this year. It missed out on a nomination for Best Musical or Comedy Film, which is kind of a shock. You know, it's been a massive box office success. Wicked won last year's Golden Globes. So I think the team will be quite disappointed about that. I guess it's not really a shock, but it's not been a very good year for Brits, especially in films. Only Cynthia Erivo, Emily Blunt and Tessa Thompson are leading the charge in the film acting categories for the Globes this year.

6:05That's not so much a shock, I suppose, just a sad thing we have to come to terms with. I think especially in Best Actress, there have been some surprises. You know, Sydney Sweeney missed out for Christie, which was her kind of Oscar bait, awards bait film in which she plays a champion boxer, which kind of got quite mixed reviews when it came out. And then instead of Sydney Sweeney, we have Eva Victor, who was nominated for her performance in this independent US film, Sorry Baby, which is about a woman navigating life after sexual assault. It's nice to see the globe supporting independent films.

6:38So snubs and unexpected wins, I suppose. And it's a big question, but what would you recommend to listeners? I'm assuming most people have seen The White Lotus. It certainly was a water cooler moment. so I'd recommend watching that I guess just to get up to speed what else was good so severance I think is probably my big recommendation for this year it's an apple tv I think a lot of people really kind of tend to kind of pass over it but it is really good it's about this mega corporation that severs people's minds by splitting their consciousness between their work self and their outside work self and neither can remember what the other person is experiencing if that makes sense so the second season of that came out this year and it was like wonderfully weird yeah really bonkers really dark really fun and a lot of kind of like jaw-dropping twists and stuff like that so i'd really recommend that i would say actually apple tv has had a really good year for the golden globes they have been throwing money at their tv section for years now like so much money i guess a disproportionate amount of money compared to their audience size but it seems to be paying off they've got three nominations for best television series in the drama category this year for severance slow horses which is their london spy show and pluribus which is their new show that's very buzzy it's by the creators of breaking bad i would recommend start maybe with severance and then move on to the other two i would also recommend adolescence of course if you've not seen it go see it it sparked a national conversation in terms of films i would probably say frankenstein i personally really enjoyed it looks beautiful it's really stylish has some really good performances.

8:10It's just kind of wonderfully glossy. And I guess because it's adapted by Shelley, it has a lovely like fable, like storytelling feel to it. Yes. And then I would go see Hamnet as well. Consider this my recommendation to Books in the Martyrkids. That's adapted from the book by Maggie O 'Farrell. And it's about Shakespeare and his wife, Agnes, specifically, and them coming to terms with the death of their child, Hamnet. And it has Jesse Buckley and Paul Mezcal. They've both picked up awards nominations for this. Amazingly powerful, really well acted. Let's go to an ad break. Coming up, what are the standout performances across film and TV over the past year?

8:48We'll see you back here in just a moment.

8:55Welcome back. Vicky, let's talk a little bit more about Wicked for Good. What did you make of the sequel because it's had mixed reviews and was obviously snubbed slightly in this year's awards it's difficult with wicked i think it's for the theater kids you know it's for people that like loved wicked and kind of love the kind of high camp high drama element of it all i personally was kind of middle of the road with it you know the hype i think that's personally partially due to kind of wicked overexposure the press junket's been going for a year we've basically not seen a break from ariana grande and cynthia arrivo from our screens which has kind of not really what's me to go watch more of them.

9:35It's good fun, I think. It's kind of remarkably sepia-toned, I would say. It's a bit washed out, which kind of is a bit disappointing and makes the whole thing feel a bit depressing. And I guess the thing for me is that the first half of the show or the film is quite fun because you're meeting all these characters for the first time. You get the fun backstories. You get to know them. It's all a bit light and fizzy and exciting. You have all these great musical numbers. And then with the second half of the show and now with the second film as well, it's a bit dreary and the tone's a lot more serious.

10:06And Cynthia Erivo's wearing this kind of like dreary sex cardigan. We've heard so much about us online. I think it takes itself a bit too seriously. But Cynthia Erivo is, she is fantastic in it. She kind of holds the whole show, I think. Makes it a lot better than it could have been otherwise, I think. And she has made Golden Globes history with this. She became the first black woman to be nominated twice in the lead actress category. And tell us more about Adolescence, which came out earlier in the year but has been widely acclaimed. I went to the Netflix Up Next event, either it was the start of this year or the end of last year and they didn't really make a big deal of it.

10:41I remember they showed us a trailer and then they brought on Philip Barantini, the director, to talk about it and even from the trailer I kind of thought wow this is going to be big and it was. So this is a four-part series that dropped on Netflix earlier this year and each episode is shot in one take which required an insane amount of rehearsals and like technical stunts from the cast and crew so it's an amazing feat of work in itself but it tells the story of jamie this 13 year old who gets arrested for killing one of his classmates and his family so his dad is played by stephen graham his family's attempts to come to terms with that police investigation into what happened and then it kind of i guess dips a toe into jamie's psyche as well so the whole show is anchored by this amazing performance from owen Cooper, who is like a newbie.

11:25This is his first major acting job and he's been getting, deservedly, I think, all the flowers for this. It's a very good piece of television. I think maybe the best piece of television to come out this year. And the good news is Owen Cooper is going to be in Wuthering Heights, the Emerald Fennell film, this February. So you can watch even more of him. And finally, what about the best male or female actor? Who do you think is set to win? Stephen Graham for Adolescents. I think that one is almost guaranteed to happen. There's also So Jacob Elordi, who appeared in this BBC series, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, adapted from the book of the same name.

11:58He plays Dorigo Evans, this Australian medic who is captured by the Japanese and basically forced to work on the Burma Railway. A horrifying show, really, actually. It's so gory. It's so bleak and horrible. And it's a horrible scene where he has to amputate a man's leg and blood is going everywhere. And I had to look away from the screen for a bit. But his performance is wonderful. He's been nominated twice. So he was nominated for that and then Best Supporting Actor in a Film for Frankenstein. So the odds are fairly good that he'll get one of those. In terms of female nominations, I would say Supporting Actors.

12:32There's a lot of White Lotus nominations. Amy Leigh Wood is nominated for the White Lotus. There's a good chance she'll get that. Erin Doherty as well for Adolescents. That's a fairly good best as well. So in terms of films, Jacob Elordi's been nominated for Frankenstein for Supporting Actor, but he's also up against Paul Mezcal for Hamnet. And I think he could very well be in with A Shout as well. Benicio del Toro for One Battle After Another. So I think it's probably those three. And in terms of female actors in films, we've got Ariana Grande for Wicked. One Battle After Another again for Teyana Taylor.

13:04And then I guess most eyes might be on Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Motion Picture, which is kind of stuffed with the big names. So we've got Jesse Plemons for Bugonia. We've got Leonardo DiCaprio for One Battle After Another. We've got George Clooney for Jay Kelly. but I think the smart money would be on Timothee Chalamet, who's been nominated for Marty Supreme, which is this new film in which he basically plays, I guess, a hustler. A down-and-his-luck guy who wants to make it big in the table tennis world by patenting his special brand of Marty Supreme ping pong balls. And the reviews have just been coming out.

13:39You know, I've not seen it yet, but everyone I've seen talk about it has raved about it. They say it's like absolutely fantastic and Timothee Chalamet is absolutely amazing in it. And so I think he is almost a shoo-in for best performance by a male actor. But I guess we'll have to wait till next year to find out.

13:59And that's The Standard. For all the latest news, head to standard.co.uk. If you'd like to get in touch, please do drop us a line at podcasts at standard.co.uk. We'll be back here tomorrow morning. We'll see you then. Without a cross indem, I was fained for free.