It’s crazy to think that just two years ago, the Golden Globes were given up for dead. But Nikki Glaser rescued the show last year, proving that you can’t keep a good old Hollywood schmooze-and-booze fest down. Glaser returned to host this year’s bash, kicking off the 2026 TV awards-show season. She truly understands what the Golden Globes are all about: vanity, glitz, booze, celebrities desperate for camera time, cheap jokes about plastic surgery. She saved the best barb for herself, announcing, “Just like Frankenstein, I’ve been pieced together by an unlicensed European surgeon.”
The Globes were never meant to be a classy, respectable celebration of artistic achievement. They’ve always been the messiest, tipsiest, bitchiest of award galas, and Glaser waltzed in to make sure they stay that way. Darling Nikki had choice words for all the stars in the room, even the night’s big winners. As she quipped, “Timothée Chalamet is the first actor who had to put on muscle for a movie about ping-pong.”
Glaser got out all her political aggro in the first few minutes, going off on the redacted Epstein list: “The Golden Globe for best editing goes to… the Justice Department!” And she shanked CBS, the network showing the Globes, for its disastrous scandal-plagued launch of its Bari Weiss-ified newscast. “The award for most editing goes to CBS News,” she said. “America’s newest place to See B.S. news.”
But then she got down to her main business of puncturing Hollywood egos. She called Sean Penn “a sexy leather handbag,” from the movie she retitled One Manbun After Another. “Wicked was back with Wicked: For Money,” she said. “It was so emotional. Two hours into that movie, I was just in tears — ‘I can’t believe there’s 45 minutes left!’” Even the venerable legends weren’t safe. She saluted Steve Martin and Martin Short for “proving to us that in this industry, you are never, ever too old to still need money.”
Timothée Chalamet was the toast of the night, winning for Marty Supreme. There was actual suspense this year — a Golden Globes rarity — for best actor in a musical or comedy, the night’s most hotly awaited category. It was a real pile-up of It boys past and present: Timothée, Leonardo DiCaprio, Ethan Hawke, George Clooney, spanning five decades of shower-nozzle realness and Hollywood glam. (Plus Lee Byung-hun and Jesse Plemons.) So the moment felt like a dry run for what will be a real Oscar Night showdown.
But when Timothée won, Leo was the first one on his feet to start the standing ovation. It was a classy move — or maybe he just suddenly noticed an empty chair next to Kylie Jenner. (Just kidding.) Let’s face it, Tim should have won this last year, for his far superior Bob Dylan movie, A Complete Unknown, and it’s still a crime he had to sit there looking miserable watching Adrien Brody blather on, as did we all. He plays a narcissistic ping-pong brat in Marty Supreme, but his Dylan was a more charismatic (and funnier) version of this brat, so some of us are still bitter this is the role he’ll win his first Oscar for instead. But hey, as the man used to sing, now ain’t the time for your tears.
Timothée gave a humble and modest speech — which isn’t really what we want from this guy. “I’m in a category with many greats,” he said. “This category is stacked. I look up to all of you.” Aw, come on — we all wanted to see him strut and talk smack, as he did in his whole hilariously cocky Marty Supreme rollout. But he’s probably just saving that for Oscar Night — here’s hoping he gets up to the Academy Award podium and challenges Leo to an impromptu ping-pong battle.
Teyana Taylor won the night’s first award for One Battle After Another. “To my brown sisters and little brown girls watching tonight, our softness is not a liability,” she said before dancing offstage. “Our light doesn’t need permission to shine. We belong in every room we walk into. Our voices matter.”
Owen Cooper is already a legend with Adolescence, but he’s also one of the great speech-givers of our time, as he proved last fall at the Emmys. Tonight, he had the boss move of not being sure which awards show he was attending. “Oh wow, standing here at the Golden…wow…Golden…Globes?” Total king behavior. “What an incredible journey me and my family have been put through,” he told the crowd, to some chuckles. “I took a risk and I went to drama classes. I was the only boy there. It was embarrassing, but I got through it.” At 16, he’s the youngest male Globes winner since [checks very depressing notes] Ricky Schroder, who won New Star of the Year in 1980. Hey, no worries, Coop — just don’t grow up to be him and you’ll do fine. He ended with a touching shoutout to Liverpool F.C., saying, “Let’s go 2026 —you’ll never walk alone!”
Zoë Kravitz had the night’s funniest line, presenting best actor in a musical or comedy with co-star Dave Franco from The Studio. “For the record, you guys can stop offering shrooms everywhere we go,” she said. “I’m Zoë Kravitz and I have my own shrooms.”
And the winner in that category turned out to be Seth Rogen, a moment that turned into a real-life bit from The Studio. “This is so weird! We just pretended to do this, and now it is happening!” Rogen said, holding his Golden Globe. “I thought the only way I would get to hold one is to create a show to give myself a fake one.” It would have been perfect if he’d thanked Sal Saperstein. But he still gave one of the night’s funniest speeches, saluting Steve Martin and Martin Short. “I remember growing up watching you guys my whole life, thinking… ‘One day I’m going to beat them!’” Then he signed off with the welcome words, “I’ll get out of here now.”
Jean Smart won her third Golden Globe for Hacks, quipping, “What can I say? I’m a greedy bitch.” Rhea Seehorn won for Pluribus, looking delightfully stunned. “My speech says, ‘Get a prescription for beta blockers,’” she said. “But I did not! Sorry!” Wagner Moura won for The Secret Agent and gave a moving speech about the generational trauma from Brazil’s 1970s military dictatorship. Rose Byrne won for If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, and explained why her brother George was her date instead of Bobby Cannavale. “I want to thank my husband,” she said, “who couldn’t be here because we’re getting a bearded dragon and he went to a reptile expo in New Jersey.”
Erin Doherty won for her performance in that stunning third episode of Adolescence, dropping a few bleeped profanities. It was poetic for Doherty to win on the tenth anniversary of David Bowie’s death, since she had that great scene on The Crown where she’s Princess Anne singing “Starman” in the car. (It also evokes how Bowie happened to die on the night of the 2016 Golden Globes, a hilariously bad show nobody even remembered the next day, totally upstaging his pal Ricky Gervais, who hosted. That’s showbiz.)
Best non-poker face of the night: Jeremy Allen White, nominated for The Bear, giving a sad little stoic half-smile when Rogen won instead. He looked like Springsteen watching the Chicken Man get blown up. (Fingers crossed he gets that deserved Oscar nod for Deliver Me From Nowhere. But Hollywood’s a lot like Atlantic City — down here it’s just winners and losers and don’t get caught on the wrong side of that line.)
Ryan Coogler’s Sinners won the extremely strange category of Cinematic and Box Office Achievement. It was up against Avatar: Fire & Ash, not even released yet when it was nominated; Mission: Impossible: The Final Reckoning, a box office bomb; and KPop Demon Hunters, a streaming hit that barely grazed theaters. Since Sinners was an acclaimed art film that also made loads of money, it was a shoo-in. KPop Demon Hunters took Best Song for “Golden,” one of the night’s least surprising wins.
Snoop Dogg came out to present the new Best Podcast award to Amy Poehler for Good Hang. For some reason, the Globes plugged the podcasts in an endless stroke session, with clips of each nominee, more air time than they gave any nominated actors or films. It was a weird detour from the rest of the show, with a tone-deaf NPR joke. But it inspired one of Glaser’s sharpest comedy bits — a fake ad for the format: “Podcasts: They’re Just What We Have Now.”
Glaser mocked Leonardo DiCaprio’s young dates, a joke that’s old enough to buy Leo a drink, but cleverly flipped it it into a joke about his bland persona. “We don’t know anything else about you, man! Like, open up! I searched — the most in-depth interview you’ve ever given was in Teen Beat magazine in 1991. Is your favorite food still ‘Pasta, pasta and more pasta’?”(That interview is real, by the way. The 16-year-old Leo’s favorite song is “U Can’t Touch This,” his favorite band is Pink Floyd, his favorite book is Lord of the Flies. You can tell a real teenage boy filled out the questionnaire because for musical instruments he says, “I used to play the organ.”)
Wanda Sykes was a riot presenting the award for Best Stand-Up Special. “Shout out to the Golden Globes for having me,” she said. “Because you know there’s some people pissed off that a queer black woman is up here doing the job of two mediocre white guys.” As she roasted the nominees, she said, “Ricky Gervais, I love you for not being here. Because if you win, I get to accept the award on your behalf, and you’re gonna thank God and the trans community.” Sure enough, Ricky won, and Wanda declared, “He would like to thank God and his trans community.”
In the classic Golden Globes tradition, there were plenty of glitches and gaffes. They had the crazy idea not to show any clips for the actors and actresses up for awards — so we didn’t get a chance to see the stars do what they do. This was a truly dumb decision — not as dumb as the Oscars’ dumb decision last year to replace these clips with actors giving speeches about the nominees, but few decisions that dumb ever get made a second time.
The dippiest move of the night: the voice-over guys, who simply could not shut up, stepping on the dramatic moments with insipid banter so smarmy you had to hope it was some kind of comedy bit. When Stellan Skarsgård came to the podium, they kept gushing, “I cannot WAIT for Mamma Mia 3! I have been asking Amanda Seyfried about that movie for soooo long!” Sweeties, now is so not the time. An actual thing they said on live TV, after Owen Cooper won: “It’ll be two to three years till we get our next Adolescence. So Owen will be a lot older!” Wow, thanks, Rain Man! That is, in fact, how math works.
They also used Teyana Taylor’s win to plug All’s Fair. Sadly, All’s Fair was not nominated for a thing, though it deserved a comedy nod for the scene where the lawyers threaten Rick Springfield with a nasty Rolling Stone article if he doesn’t settle with his ex-wife Jessica Simpson. Nice try, but we freaking love Rick. (So tragic David Lynch didn’t live to see Naomi Watts play Kim Kardashian’s legal partner.)
The music was a zany wedding-DJ mix of bops — it was cute when they greeted Macaulay Culkin with “Return of the Mack.” Sometimes it was just hilariously wrong, like when the devastating Hamnet won best drama and producers cued Kool and the Gang’s “Celebration.” When Priyanka Chopra made an appearance with Blackpink’s Lisa, Glaser announced, “One was in White Lotus and the other one wed a white Jonas” — yep, that actually happened. Glaser didn’t go as hard as she did last year — she even busted out the old Billy Crystal “we’re halfway through” joke, an annual Oscar groaner that even Billy gave up on. But she summed up the party-hearty spirit of the Golden Globes: one bottle after another.
