All Of The Most Political Moments From The 2020 Golden Globes

The Golden Globes is historically known for being a looser, more alcohol-friendly award show — although just because celebrities turned out looking for a good time on Sunday (January 5) doesn't mean they didn't also use their platforms for a greater good. While in the award show's three-hour telecast, it was rare when Hollywood's biggest stars didn't use their time at the mic to speak truth to power in some way — even host Ricky Gervais, who clearly could not have cared less to do his job, called out heavyweight organizations Amazon, Disney, and Apple for their exploitive manufacturing practices.


From the subtle to the direct, winners didn't hold back. Below, just some of the ways actors and creatives talked out about the issues they care about:


Ramy Youssef Is aware What His Win Means


The creator of the Hulu show Ramy nabbed the opening win of the night for Best Actor in a Television Series, Comedy and wasted no time in breaking host Ricky Gervais's number-one acceptance-speech rule, AKA "Don't thank God." (Gervais is a notorious atheist.) He thanked both God and his parents for supporting him in the creation of his show, and people on Twitter rapidly picked up the importance of a Arab Muslim man saying "Allahu Akbar" on live TV throughout one of Hollywood's biggest nights.


Youssef has been open about how he hopes Ramy helps widen the lens of Arab and Muslim representation on television, a medium in which Hollywood notoriously falls back on xenophobic stereotypes in depicting those communities. "There is this weight that sort of sits on something that comes from someone like me, and there's an anxiety that comes with that," Youssef told NPR about the responsibility he feels about helming one of the opening shows to help correct and confront American television's exclusionary past.


Bong Joon Ho Wants You To Read More


Any time the Parasite director collected the award for Best Foreign-Language Film, he did so with a translator by his side. He delivered his speech mostly in Korean and reminded the audience, "Once you conquer the one-inch tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so several more astonishing films." Bong's film was nominated alongside Pedro Almodóvar's Pain and Glory (which features Spanish-language dialogue), Ladj Ly's Les Misérables and Céline Sciamma's Portrait of A female on Fire (which are both in French), and Lulu Wang's The Farewell (which mostly features Mandarin Chinese dialogue). 


"I think we use only one language," Bong added while in his speech. "The cinema."


Just a Reminder: The World Is On Fire


Things might have been bright and cheery indoor in the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles, however plenty of celebrities were quick to remind each person that things are dire, and the climate crisis is happening right now. Once Jennifer Aniston accepted Russell Crowe's award on his behalf, it was because he was residence in Australia, attempting to help the firefighting efforts.


"We need to act based on science, move our global workforce to renewable energy and respect our planet for the special and astonishing place it is," the actor, who won for his work in The Loudest Voice, mentioned by means of the a speech he sent in ahead of time. "That way, we all have a future."


Other celebrities, including Cate Blanchett, Naomi Watts, Pierce Brosnan, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge also highlighted the fires, which have been burning steadily for months and have claimed thousands of homes and dozens of lives. "We’ve hatched an extraordinary plan with Ralph & Russo, our Australian designers, who made this incredible couture suit which is the most extraordinary thing I’ve ever worn, and we’re going to auction it and the cash that is raised from it will go toward relief in Australia," Waller-Bridge, who won twice for her work on the show Fleabag, told reporters backstage. "I’m really excited to be segment of that."


Let Kate McKinnon Host All of the Things


The Saturday Night Live star paid homage to Ellen DeGeneres, the recipient of this year's Carol Burnett Award, and in doing so, opened up about what seeing another gay woman on television felt like any time if she was a child.


DeGeneres famously came out in a two-part episode of her eponymous sitcom, called "The Puppy Episode," in 1997. At the time, the move was especially controversial — and cost her a job for several years. Yet that glimmer of representation meant a lot to plenty of LGBTQ+ people, including McKinnon, who called her experience of self-discovery "a very scary thing to suddenly know about yourself. It’s categorize kind of like doing 23 and Me and discovering that you have alien DNA. And the only thing that made it far less scary was seeing Ellen on TV."


"If I hadn’t seen [Ellen] on TV, I would have thought, ‘I could never be on TV. They don’t let LGBTQ people be on TV,’" McKinnon added. "And more than that, I would have gone on thinking that I was an alien and that I maybe even didn’t have a right to be here. So thank you, Ellen, for giving me a shot at a good life."


Patricia Arquette Did Not Come To Play


What piece of Patricia Arquette's speech wasn't political?  The actor, who was honored for her work in The Act with a Best Supporting Actress in a TV Series award, wasted no time in pivoting the conversation away from the perfunctory thank-yous and toward a myriad of pressing issues.


"We will visualize a nation on the brink of war, the United States of America, a president tweeting out a threat of 52 bombs including cultural sites," she mentioned, referencing President Donald Trump's threat of committing war crimes. "Young people risking their lives traveling across the world. People not knowing if bombs are gonna drop on their kids' heads. And the continent of Australia on fire. So Whenever I love my kids so much, I beg of us all to give them a higher end world. For our kids and their kids, we have to vote in 2020 and we have to beg and plead for each person we know to vote in 2020."


And Michelle Williams Brought It All Back To "A Woman's Right To Choose"


Throughout her acceptance speech, the Fosse/Verdon star highlighted the choices people make on the way to earning any accolades @they could amass.


"I'm grateful for the acknowledgement of the choices I've made along with grateful to have lived at a moment in our society where choice exists, because as ladies and as ladies things can occur to our bodies that are not our choice,” she mentioned. “I've tried my very best to live a life of my own making and not just a series of events that happened to me, nevertheless one that I may stand back and look at and recognize my handwriting all over it — some days messy and scrawling, some days cautious and precise, although one that I have carved with my own hand."


She brought the sentiment residence by urging ladies in particular to head to the polls any time and although often they can. "So girls, 18 to 118, once it's almost time to vote, please do so in your own self-interest. It's what boys have been doing for years, which is why the world looks so much like them," she mentioned. "Don't forget we are the hugest voting body in this nation. Let's make it look more like us."


The reality of her sentiment is complex by a few factors, including that a few female legislators have worked to develop anti-choice legislation. In May, Alabama governor Kay Ivey signed a bill that targeted abortion providers and threatened them with life in prison; it has since been blocked by a federal judge. And of the girls who vote, white girls specifically are the most likely to vote for conservative representatives, while Black voters and Black women voters especially drove much of the progressive wins in the 2018 midterms.


Adding to all of this, voter access is constantly under attack by gerrymandering, disinformation, and other tactics that add up so that several people feel as if their votes aren't as powerful or key as they actually are. Encouraging people to vote is an important component of the fight to sustain individual rights. Nevertheless sort in attempt to do that, we also have to change the laws that disenfranchise voters — and that often requires voting.