None nominated by the Globes.
And there was the work from non-white males. Michael K. Williams on Lovecraft. Colman Domingo on Euphoria. Lamorne Morris on Hulu’s Woke. Sterling K. Brown, who was nominated in two different Emmy categories for two different roles last year, including NBC’s This Is Us. Joshua Caleb Johnson from Showtime’s The Good Lord Bird. Nicco Annan as non-binary strip club owner Uncle Clifford on Starz’ P-Valley. Chris Rock as crime boss Loy Cannon and Glynn Turman as his second-in-command on the fourth season of FX’s Fargo.
All high-quality work. All snubbed by the Globes.
In the past, when people of color came up short in high-profile industry nominations and awards—the #OscarsSoWhite hashtag feels like it happened a century ago, doesn’t it?—the argument was that the performances weren’t there. But this year, months after a summer where the public reckoning over civil rights and police brutality got two TV shows canceled—Cops and Live PD—that excuse doesn’t pass muster any longer.
Two TV projects with predominantly Black casts were nominated in this year’s Golden Globes: Lovecraft Country as best drama and Amazon Prime Video’s Small Axe as best limited series. Likewise, Black male actors from those projects, Jonathan Majors from Lovecraft and John Boyega from Small Axe, were nominated, along with Don Cheadle from Showtime’s Black Monday and Ramy Youssef from Hulu’s Ramy. But that still leaves 16 other nomination slots for male performers which all went to white guys.
Not a single Black woman was nominated in the Globes’ 20 nomination slots for female performers. (Anya Taylor-Joy, who is of Argentine descent and self-identifies as Latina, was nominated playing a white character on Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit.)
It’s easy to blame the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the group that chooses Golden Globes nominees and winners. Over the years, they’ve developed a well-deserved reputation for eccentric choices focused on celebrity, Europeans and those who schmooze them. And unlike the Oscars, they also hand out awards in TV, where their taste is even less predictable.