Dear Gossips,

Yesterday marked the deadline for this year’s Golden Globe submissions. Although the eligibility period for television runs until December 31 and for film it’s February 28, programs and movies that want to be in contention must have submitted by now. Typically, by now, in a non-pandemic year, we’d already see Oscar frontrunners emerge, and we’d be talking about the candidates jockeying for position. This year, there are frontrunners but I don’t know that we’re talking about them the way we ordinarily would. Chloe Zhao’s Nomadland, starring Frances McDormand seems to be the leader so far with Regina King’s One Night in Miami and Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7 coming up too. In a regular year, the next two weeks, before the holiday break, is when all kinds of screenings and parties and other campaign events would be scheduled to get in front of Academy voters before the nomination period begins. This year, well, hopefully everyone’s watching those screeners at home.

On the television side, it’ll be interesting to see if Schitt’s Creek can repeat its Emmys sweep at the Globes. What’s crazy is that the series has NEVER been nominated for a Globe. And sometimes the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the small group of quirky and often controversial journalists that actually decide on the awards, seems to go out of its way to not make the same choices as the Emmys. Veep, for example, which as we’ve seen was an Emmys favourite during its run, has never won a Golden Globe, not even for Julia Louis Dreyfus.

Sometimes, though, the Emmys get stuck in a pattern, slow to acknowledge the new series and performances shaping TV culture. This is what the Globes have been known to be quicker at – identifying and rewarding shows and artists earlier. A couple of examples: Jane The Virgin and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.

This year, one of the critical favourites in the Limited Series category is Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You. If you haven’t watched it yet… this is the time. The holidays are coming up. Many of us are being encouraged to stay home. Many of us will be staying home and stuffing our faces full of television. Put I May Destroy You on the list. It’s basically the most critically acclaimed series of 2020 and its star, Michaela, is also the writer, director, and producer, who turned down a $1 million offer from Netflix for the show because she wanted a percentage of the copyright. I May Destroy You eventually ended up on HBO and Michaela is considered one of the brightest, most powerful young talents in the business. She was also named British GQ’s Creative Icon of the Year last week and she tells the magazine that in the moment, she was ready to walk away and felt empowered to walk away, even if meant she’d be broke, because she was unwilling to compromise on owning a share of her work.

At the Globes, Michaela could make history by being a double winner, the first woman to do so in the Limited Series category. The Globes have rewarded female star creators in the past like Lena Dunham and Phoebe Waller-Bridge. But…

Last year the Globes completely shut out When They See Us, one of the most celebrated series of 2019, nominated for 16 Emmys. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association decided to nominate George Clooney’s Catch-22 instead which…no disrespect to Clooney but… nobody cared about. The reviews were beige, the show was beige, but the HFPA decided beige was gold. And in the end, Clooney didn’t even show up.

Those 90 or so journalists that make up the Hollywood Foreign Press Association have always been starf-ckers. But they also have a major blindspot. So it’ll be interesting if they show their asses again with Michaela Coel or whether or not they take the opportunity to reward her before the Emmys do (I May Destroy You was not eligible for Emmys contention this year due to its release date).

Not that it matters to her in the long run. She has her percentage. She knows her value. And everyone wants to work with her now. The best part is she’s the one who gets to decide.

Yours in gossip,

Lainey

Michaela Coel Gossip

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