The Golden Globes made its feelings about President-elect Donald Trump and his supporters abundantly clear on Monday, with the group formerly known as the Hollywood Foreign Press Association bestowing the controversial Trump biopic The Apprentice with two surprise nominations for actors Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong.
On Monday morning, the nominations for the Golden Globes were announced, with Sebastian Stan, who plays a young Donald Trump in The Apprentice, scoring a nomination for lead actor in a dramatic movie, and Jeremy Strong, who plays Roy Cohn, landing a supporting actor nod.
The two nominations came as a surprise to Hollywood, since The Apprentice wasn’t expected to do well during awards season after flopping badly at the box office.
The Apprentice dramatizes the early years of Donald Trump’s career as a real estate magnate, focusing on his rise to prominence during the 70s and early 80s. Since its premiere earlier this year in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, the movie has been dogged by controversy, particularly for a scene in which Trump rapes his first wife, the late Ivana Trump.
Ivana Trump denied that Donald Trump raped her.
The movie, written by Vanity Fair scribe Gabriel Sherman, crashed at the domestic box office when it opened just a month before the presidential election, playing to largely empty cinemas despite a massive promotional push by the establishment news media.
Unlike the Academy Awards, which is voted on by its thousands of members, the Golden Globes is decided by the the group formerly known as the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, now the “Golden Globe Foundation” — a small cabal of entertainment media denizens affiliated with obscure foreign outlets.
For decades, the scandal-plagued group has been an open joke in Hollywood, facing accusations of ethical lapses and shady dealings, including accepting studio bribes. Following a diversity scandal two years ago, the association made a bid to clean up its act, with new ethical guidelines and a diversity mandate.
The 82nd Golden Globe Awards is set to air on CBS January 5, with comedian Nikki Glaser set to host.
Like other Hollywood awards shows, the Globes has been plagued by low ratings in recent years, with last year’s broadcast scoring 9.4 million viewers — still way down from just a few years ago.
For much of its recent history, the annual show reliably brought it around 20 million viewers.
But viewers started tuning out when the broadcast embraced woke politics, with celebrities lecturing ordinary Americans about abortion, diversity, and other unpopular subjects.
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