Hamnet‘s best motion picture, drama, win. Nikki Glaser’s triumphant return as host. Teyana Taylor’s moving speech.
There were so many moments to love during last night’s Golden Globes. The evening opened with Glaser, hosting for the second year in a row. In 2025, she saved the Globes following a disastrous 2024 hosting effort by Jo Koy. This year, she proved her elite hosting status, hitting the perfect combination of making viewers laugh at home and appealing to the difficult-to-please A-list crowd in the room. She even snuck in a tough jab at CBS, which aired the Globes and is still in the middle of Bari Weiss’s CBS News takeover. “The award for most editing goes to CBS News, America’s newest place to see B.S. news,” Glaser said onstage.
Teyana Taylor’s best supporting actress win kicked off the night on a high note. She won for One Battle After Another, in which she plays a pivotal character who doesn’t appear in the movie for that long, yet sets in motion the arc of the film. Taylor got emotional; at 35, this was her first nomination. She said it reminded her that “purpose always finds its moment.” She dedicated the award to “my Brown sisters and little Brown girls watching.” And she told them: “Our softness is not a liability. Our depth is not too much. Our light does not need permission to shine. We belong in every room we walk into. Our voices matter, and our dreams deserve space.”
The Globes gave out the first ever award for best podcast; it went to fan favorite Amy Poehler for her new show Good Hang. While the category was dominated by celebrity shows, it also included NPR’s Up First—and Poehler gave those journalists a shoutout, making fun of the celebrity takeover of the medium.
Julia Roberts didn’t win in her category, and she still got a standing ovation when she got onstage to present. She used that time to shout out Eva Victor, the writer and director behind Sorry, Baby. That film is a quiet movie that tells a story about sexual assault and its consequences in a completely new way, one that could surely benefit from Roberts imploring everyone to see it.
At the end of the night, Hamnet took the award for best motion picture, drama. Hamnet is directed by Chloé Zhao, who is one of three women to ever win the best director Oscar, for her 2020 film Nomadland. Hamnet is a story of grief and loss in Shakespeare’s life; Jessie Buckley won best actress for her portrayal of of Agnes, Shakespeare’s wife. Steven Spielberg produced the film and said Zhao was the only filmmaker who could have tackled the challenging material.
All in all, a fantastic kickoff to awards season. And one of the most inspiring messages came from Ejae, the artist behind the KPop Demon Hunters smash hit song “Golden,” which won best original song. Ejae said she trained for a decade as a girl to become a Kpop idol, but was rejected. “Rejection is redirection,” she said in her acceptance speech. “It’s never too late to shine like you were born to be.”
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
The Most Powerful Women Daily newsletter is Fortune’s daily briefing for and about the women leading the business world. Subscribe here.
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PARTING WORDS
"I love you for not being here. I love you, Ricky, but if you win, I get to accept the award on your behalf, and you are going to thank God and the trans community."
— Wanda Sykes, accepting an award on behalf of Ricky Gervais at the Golden Globes
