Best and Worst Moments From the 2024 Golden Globes

The Golden Globes had a lot to prove Sunday night. It was the award show’s return to a primo broadcast time slot after a series of scandals over finances and lack of diversity upended what used to be known as the biggest party of the year in Hollywood. Now privately owned with a greatly expanded pool of voters, the Globes were making a bid for relevance. Did that bid succeed? Well, it helped that this was the first major televised ceremony since the writers’ and actors’ strike brought Hollywood to a halt, and stars and studios looking to goose their Oscar chances turned out after some skipped last year’s event. Then again, this wasn’t the liveliest show. Here are the highs and lows as we saw them.

Most Historic Win: Lily Gladstone

In a momentous triumph, Lily Gladstone became the first Indigenous person to win a Golden Globe for best actress, for her turn in “Killers of the Flower Moon” as an Osage woman whose family members are killed in a plot to take their fortune. Gladstone, whose background is Blackfeet and Nez Perce, was only the second Native actress to receive recognition from the Globes: Irene Bedard was nominated in 1995 for “Lakota Woman: Siege at Wounded Knee,” a television movie.

After receiving a standing ovation, an overcome Gladstone spoke a few lines in the Blackfeet language, “the beautiful community nation that raised me, that encouraged me to keep going, keep doing this,” she explained in English.

“I’m so grateful that I can speak even a little bit of my language,” she added later, “because in this business, Native actors used to speak their lines in English, and then the sound mixers would run them backwards to accomplish Native languages on camera.” She dedicated the award to “every little rez kid” who had a dream. — Esther Zuckerman