The Hollywood Foreign Press Association is trying to forge ahead in the wake of a year of controversy and boycotts.
The 79th Golden Globe Awards, set for Sunday, will highlight the philanthropic efforts of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association — which The Hollywood Reporter has previously written about — with winners announced intermittently throughout a 90-minute gathering at the Beverly Hilton, the HFPA revealed on Tuesday.
There will be no red carpet and no celebrities, non-HFPA members of the press or audience members in attendance — a reflection of both the grave COVID situation and the fact that the HFPA is currently personae non gratae with many in Hollywood.
It remains unclear if or how people not in the room will be able to watch the ceremony if they desire to do so — a live stream is a possibility, but there are presumably legal hurdles to broadcasting something as “the Golden Globe Awards” without the participation of NBC, which owns the broadcasting rights to the Golden Globe Awards.
And NBC is decidedly not participating in this year’s Globes, part of the fallout of last February’s Los Angeles Times exposé about the HFPA’s conduct and demographic makeup. The resulting uproar led many Hollywood constituencies to boycott the HFPA and prompted NBC, their longtime broadcasting partner for the Globes, to decline to air a Globes ceremony in 2022.
In whatever form this year’s gathering occurs, HFPA grantees and Kyle Bowser, svp NAACP Hollywood Bureau, will discuss their work with the organization throughout the ceremony.