After allegations of impropriety and issues with diversity, the Golden Globes are returning but is the industry ready to take them back?
The moment Tom Cruise, recently re-throned King of Hollywood, decided to publicly boycott the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, it might have been wise to call it a day, the Maverick seal of disapproval hammering with nails a coffin already almost closed shut. But the HFPA, the controversial group behind the Golden Globes, didn’t flinch at the actor’s snub when he handed back his prior awards in May 2021, and instead soldiered on, for better or worse.
Cruise was one of many big names protesting against the problematic practices of the group, whose shadowy dealings were brought to light in two ground-shifting exposés in the Los Angeles Times just months earlier. The group of journalists, long seen as both question mark and punchline within the industry, was revealed as both embarrassingly lacking in diversity (among its 87 members, not a single one was black) and guilty of “ethical lapses” with studios and publicists courting votes with gifts and trips around the world. A lawsuit filed by a Norwegian journalist denied entrance accused them of a “culture of corruption”. It opened the floodgates to more – a leaked anti-Black Lives Matter email from a former HFPA president, members resigning after labelling the organisation as “toxic” – and after celebrities, and their publicists, backed away, so did the US TV network NBC, cutting off a deal estimated to be worth $60m a year.
