For years, people have been begging awards committees, especially the Golden Globes, to diversify the films and actors that they nominate. For too long, the focus has been primarily on straight white people, while ignoring even more talented Black, Asian, and queer actors*. The show came under so much fire in 2022 that it opted not to air the awards altogether.
This year, there were high hopes that the Golden Globes would review a more diverse film set, and yet it still isn’t nearly good enough. The fact that this is still happening makes these awards practically worthless, since so much talent is being ignored. Still, I decided to go through. the awards and quantify the complete lack of diversity, since hopefully pointing it out will make people more aware.
Below, I listed all categories which nominate individuals, and broke down the number of queer people and people of color nominated for each. Winners of each category are bolded.
*I choose to use “actor” as a gender-neutral term in this article and across the website
Movie Actors
Best Actress – Motion Picture – Drama
- Cate Blanchett, TÁR
- Olivia Colman
- Viola Davis
- Ana de Armas
- Michelle Williams
Queer: 0
Black: 1
Latinx: 1
While Cate Blanchett is a presumably straight woman, she is a lesbian icon who won the Golden Globe in this category for playing the lesbian conductor Lydia Tár.
Best Actor – Motion Picture – Drama
- Austin Butler, Elvis
- Brendan Fraser
- Hugh Jackman
- Bill Nighy
- Jeremy Pope
Queer: 1
Black: 1
Jeremy Pope is doing the work of increasing the numbers in both of these categories as he receives his first ever Golden Globe nomination for his performance in The Inspection.
Best Actress – Motion Picture – Musical / Comedy
- Lesley Manville
- Margot Robbie
- Anya Taylor-Joy
- Emma Thompson
- Michelle Yeoh, Everything Everywhere All at Once
Queer: 0
Asian: 1
Latinx: 1
While I am listing Anya Taylor-Joy here as Latinx (which she is) she is not included in the “people of color” totals below, as she is a white woman.
Best Actor – Motion Picture – Musical / Comedy
- Diego Calva
- Daniel Craig
- Adam Driver
- Colin Farrell, The Banshees of Inisherin
- Ralph Fiennes
Queer: 0
Latinx: 1
I have truly never heard of Diego Calva until today, and I also thought Babylon was doing fairly terribly at the box office, but good for him for getting this nomination nonetheless.
Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture
- Angela Bassett, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
- Kerry Condon
- Jamie Lee Curtis
- Dolly de Leon
- Carey Mulligan
Queer: 0
Black: 1
Asian: 1
Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture
- Brendan Gleeson
- Barry Keoghan
- Brad Pitt
- Ke Huy Quan, Everything Everywhere All at Once
- Eddie Redmayne
Queer: 0
Asian: 1
TV Actors
Best Actress – Limited Series
- Jessica Chastain
- Julia Garner
- Lily James
- Julia Roberts
- Amanda Seyfried, The Dropout
Queer: 0
People of Color: 0
While I am deeply obsessed with multiple of these women, we are met with our first category featuring both zero queer people and zero people of color.
Best Actor – Limited Series
- Taron Egerton
- Colin Firth
- Andrew Garfield
- Evan Peters, Dahmer- Monster
- Sebastian Stan
Queer: 0
People: 0
And again! Apparently exclusively straight white people lead TV limited series (a simple google search will show that The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, Women of the Movement, From Scratch, and DMZ all prove this wrong). To make matters worst, Dahmer, a show that shows the brutal murders of Black queer people against the wishes of the victim’s families, won this category.
Best Television Actress – Drama
- Emma D’Arcy
- Laura Linney
- Imelda Staunton
- Hilary Swank
- Zendaya, Euphoria
Queer: 1
Black: 1
We have a bit of diversity in this category (not nearly enough, but more than the previous few), but even this is overshadowed by the fact that Emma D’Arcy is not an “actress” due to the fact that she is not a woman. Alas! Zendaya, an icon in every field, won this category.
Best Television Actor – Drama
- Jeff Bridges
- Kevin Costner, Yellowstone
- Diego Luna
- Bob Odenkirk
- Adam Scott
Queer: 0
Latinx: 1
Best Television Actress – Musical / Comedy
- Quinta Brunson, Abbott Elementary
- Kaley Cuoco
- Selena Gomez
- Jenna Ortega
- Jean Smart
Queer: 0
Black: 1
Latinx: 2
This category is led by Mexican actresses Selena Gomez and Jenna Ortega, along with breakout star Quinta Brunson. This category features the fewest white people of all of the categories!
Best Television Actor – Musical / Comedy
- Donald Glover
- Bill Hader
- Steve Martin
- Martin Short
- Jeremy Allen White, The Bear
Queer: 0
Black: 1
Best Supporting Actress – Limited Series
- Jennifer Coolidge, The White Lotus
- Claire Danes
- Daisy Edgar-Jones
- Niecy Nash-Betts
- Aubrey Plaza
Queer: 2
Black: 1
Latinx: 1
Niecy Nash and Aubrey Plaza are doing excellent work to diversify this category, with both women being queer people of color. Also, unclear if I’ve mentioned this before, but Aubrey Plaza is the love of my life.
Best Supporting Actor – Limited Series
- F. Murray Abraham
- Domhnall Gleeson
- Paul Walter Hauser, Black Bird
- Richard Jenkins
- Seth Rogan
Queer: 0
People of Color: 0
Once again we see a limited series category filled with only white men.
Best Supporting Actress – Television Series
- Elizabeth Debicki
- Hannah Einbinder
- Julia Garner, Ozark
- Janelle James
- Sheryl Lee Ralph
Queer: 1
Black: 2
Best Supporting Actor – Television Series
- John Lithgow
- Jonathan Pryce
- John Turturro
- Tyler James Williams, Abbott Elementary
- Henry Winkler
Queer: 0
Black: 1
Add it Up
Of the 80 actors nominated (counting duplicate nominations twice) 19 were people of color and 5 were queer. Of those, 6 people of color won in their category and 0 queer people won. This means that 37.5% of the winning actors were people of color despite only receiving 23% of the nominations. I can say with confidence that diverse actors exist and perform at the highest level; it is ignorant and intentionally biased of the Golden Globes and other award shows to ignore that.
Of the 10 Black actors who received nominations, 4 (along with 50% winners) were from Abbott Elementary, indicating that very little effort was put in to even watching a diverse array of shows. Harlem, Bel-Air, P-Valley, Queen Sugar, are all incredible 2022 shows featuring a primarily Black cast. Of the Asian actors, 2/3 (along with the only non-white director) were from Everything Everywhere All at Once, and both won their category. Another disappointing statistic to note is that there were no South Asian people nominated in any category. All of these people mentioned above deserve their nominations, but choosing one movie and one show to count as “representation” is laziness on the part of the team choosing nominees.
Director & Screenplay & Score
It is appalling to me to see the lack of women, nonbinary people, and non-white people who are nominated for these categories. There were four white men nominated for director— James Cameron, Baz Luhrmann, Martin McDonagh, and Steven Spielberg. The fifth nomination also consists of a white man, Daniel Scheinert, who partnered with Daniel Kwan to direct Everything Everywhere All at Once, the film that won our Best Movie of the Year. This means that of the six people nominated, all are men, and just one is non-white. Daniel Kwan being the only Asian person, and the only remotely diverse person nominated for this category, is unacceptable.
The Best Screenplay field sees many similar faces. Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan are nominated once again, along with Martin McDonagh and Steven Spielberg, the latter of whom is this time nominated alongside Tony Kushner. Our final two fields are filled by Todd Field, a white man, and Sarah Polley, a white woman.
For Best Score, we once again see four white men— Carter Burwell, Alexandre Desplat, Justin Hurwitz, and John Williams— and just a single woman, Hildur Guònadóttir. Nobody nominated is non-white.
Among both of these categories combined, Daniel Kwan is the only Asian person and only person of color, and Sarah Polley is the only woman who received a nomination. Neither of them won in their fields. There are countless other women and people of color who directed and wrote incredible this year that deserve the nomination. Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (Do Revenge), Carrie Cracknell (Persuasion), Wanuri Kahlu (Look Both Ways) and so many other diverse directors deserve recognition. While I do not have easy access to lists of screenplay writers and score writers, I am sure that the same is true of those categories as well.
The Women in Film organization does a great job of listing the women who are in fact eligible for these awards. I encourage everyone reading this to go out of their way to celebrate films with non straight white males both behind the screen and on it.
Who were you hoping got nominated that was snubbed this year?
Write Through the Night 