2025 Golden Globes highs (Nikki Glaser) and lows (those ‘strange’ camera angles)

The 2025 Golden Globe Awards aired on Sunday, with Emilia Pérez and Shōgun each scoring four awards to lead the field, followed by The Brutalist with three. But how were the Globes as a TV show? Here’s a rundown of the ceremony’s highs and lows.

HIGH: Nikki Glaser brought her exceptional roast comedy skills to the Globes’ opening monologue, delivering a tight 10-minute set featuring well-placed jabs at the state of the industry, from Ozempic’s influence to Peacock’s lack of it. She pushed the envelope just far enough — “I predict five years from now, like when you’re watching little clips of the show on YouTube, you’ll see someone in one of the crowd shots, and you’ll go, ‘Oh my God, that was before they caught that guy!'” — without going overboard. And she found some time to just be silly, roping in Adam Sandler to say “Chalamet!” in Opera Man voice. She was supremely confident and polished and kept the show jauntily rolling along. Later, she sprinkled in some more of her trademark self-depreciation, deep-sixing a parody song that combined Conclave with Wicked and mocking her own Globes loss (she was beaten in the stand-up comedy special category by Ali Wong). Basically, she was the anti-Jo Koy.

LOW: The Globes set up the presenters to fail by framing them in claustrophobic close-ups with their backs to the audience while reading mostly uninspired scripted banter. One of the few presenter pairs to escape unscathed was Seth Rogen and Catherine O’Hara. Rogen called out the strange setup, calling it “inelegant” and “strange,” saying what we all were thinking. Comedian Nate Bargatze didn’t have to present in that format, perhaps because he was doing the stand-up category, and delivered his lines like the pro he is. Pity the celebs who weren’t so lucky.

HIGH: Canadian exports Rogen and O’Hara took a risk on a lengthy bit in which they recalled all the made-up awards they’ve won north of the border. “Catherine won not one, but two Golden Antlers as Mama Morissette in The Alanis Morissette Story,” said Rogen. O’Hara discussed how she nursed a baby otter in An Otter’s Tale: “I think the otter was Method, and I lost half a nipple.” And Rogen riffed on all the hard-core pornography he filmed, notably the Moose Knuckles trilogy, which was much more respected by Canucks than Americans: “We won a Beaver, we actually swept the Beavers that year.” It goes to show that when it comes to doing comedy at the Golden Globes, leave it to the professionals.

LOW: Ted Danson didn’t win Best TV Comedy Actor for A Man on the Inside, so you’d never know from watching the telecast that he was one of the big winners at this year’s Globes. Two days earlier, he received the honorary Carol Burnett Award for his lifetime achievement in television, but it failed to warrant an onair mention. Viola Davis received the Cecil B. DeMille Award for career achievement in film. The announcer made note of that when she presented Best Film Drama Actress, but that’s it. Those awards used to be handed out during the main ceremony, often producing headline-making moments like when Meryl Streep called out Donald Trump for bullying during his first campaign for president. But this year those prizes were treated like an afterthought.

HIGH: Colin Farrell gave a typically charming speech while accepting his Golden Globe for limited series best actor for his performance in The Penguin, his third Globe overall. He opened with a quip (“No one to thank on this one. I did it all by myself.”) before giving props to his writers, costars, and makeup team, but reserved his greatest gratitude for Carolina, the “great dame” of craft services. “Carolina, on those cold winter nights in New York where I was the only one overheating, she’d be there with a coconut water every half an hour,” he gushed. “Carolina, God bless you. She kept the whole crew going.”

HIGH: Demi Moore also delivered a pitch-perfect speech that might help her wrap up an Oscar nomination in a tight Best Actress contest. She recalled a producer once labeling her a “popcorn actress” who might score at the box office but never make anything of substance. But winning Best Film Comedy/Musical Actress for The Substance finally proved that producer wrong. “I’ve been doing this a long time, over 45 years, and this is the first time I’ve ever won anything as an actor,” she said. “I was at a low point, I had this magically bold, courageous, out-of-the-box, absolutely bonkers script come across my desk, and the universe told me that you’re not done.”

LOW: Best Cinematic and Box Office Achievement is, as Demi Moore might say, a “popcorn” award. It’s an ill-defined category designed to reward crowd-pleasing films that aren’t deemed artistic enough for the serious categories. For Wicked, like Barbie before it, the category became a consolation prize. But the musical’s director, Jon M. Chu, made the most of it, using his acceptance speech to talk about the power of filmmaking: “In a time when pessimism and cynicism sort of rule the planet right now, we can still make art that is a radical act of optimism, that is empowerment, that is joy.” It was a welcome moment of sincerity to counter an otherwise cynical category.

HIGH: Awkwafina and Melissa McCarthy, reliable comedians always, got the most out of their presentation of Best TV Comedy Series, poking fun at performative celebrity activism. McCarthy, playfully mistaking The Bear for Cocaine Bear, sought to raise awareness for the scourge of substance abuse in the ursine community, while thanking The Gentlemen for finally giving men a voice. They were a ray of sunshine in an otherwise awkward series of presenter pairings.

HIGH: This year’s Best Actress Oscar race is as close as they come, and tonight’s Globes offered little clarity. The top four women in the Gold Derby Oscar odds all lost. Mikey Madison (Anora), Cynthia Erivo (Wicked), and Karla Sofía Gascón (Emilia Pérez) were bested in Best Film Comedy/Musical Actress by Demi Moore, while Angelina Jolie (Maria) was defeated by Fernanda Torres (I’m Still Here). While surprising, the latter upset did show that the new-look Golden Globes are charting their own path instead of name-checking the biggest stars or the highest-profile Oscar contenders, as the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which had until two years ago overseen the Globes, was often accused of doing.