Golden Globes 2023 key moments: Kevin Costner shelters in place and Tom Cruise gets a kicking

The host insults his hosts

“I‘m here because I’m Black,” said incoming MC Jerrod Carmichael, who addressed the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s tarnished reputation head-on in his opening monologue. “They didn’t have a single Black member until George Floyd was killed,” he said, shrugging off much of their apparent rehabilitation efforts and saying he only took the gig for the $500,000 paycheck.

The host insults Tom Cruise

Introducing the Top Gun: Maverick star, Carmichael drew awkward gasps and a few whoops with his mention of the main difficulty with Hollywood’s fulsome embrace of its most powerful star. “Backstage, I found these three Golden Globe awards that Tom Cruise returned. Maybe we take these three things and exchange them for the safe return of Shelly Miscavige?” he said, referring to the long-invisible wife of the Scientology leader David Miscavige.

Eddie Murphy weighs in on Will Smith

Slap-fatigue was a theme of the evening, but there was special dispensation for Murphy to take a pop at the leading player of last year’s Oscar ceremony. In his acceptance speech for the Globes’ lifetime achievement award, Murphy credited his success to three things: “Pay your taxes. Mind your business. And keep Will Smith’s wife’s name out of your fucking mouth!”

Jennifer Coolidge rules supreme

The White Lotus was the watercooler hit of the season and Coolidge’s speech the smash of the night, alternately very funny and – in its championing of series creator Mike White – extremely moving.

Special mention to her response when offered a hand to the stage by Colin Farrell:

Mike White has his moment

Later, a possibly tired and emotional White repaid the compliment to Coolidge and enjoyed gazing into the sea of faces of those who had turned down the chance to make the show with him.

Colin Farrell gains on his Oscar

The Academy Awards’ best actor race this year has been a hard one to call, but Farrell’s charming speech may have nudged him into frontrunner position, over Brendan Fraser and Austin Butler.

Regina Hall doesn’t buy Kevin Costner’s no-show

Picking up Costner’s acting award for Yellowstone, Hall expressed some scepticism over how keen to attend Costner really had been, before reading out that he had to “shelter in place in Santa Barbara”.

Other notable absences were Cate Blanchett, apparently shooting in London so unable to pick up her best actress in a drama prize, and Amanda Seyfried, “deep in the process of creating a new musical and could not be here”.

Michelle Yeoh’s popular touch

Jamie Lee Curtis’s reaction to news her Everything Everywhere All at Once co-star had taken best actress in a comedy or musical was broadly shared across the room –and Twitter.

Yeoh’s speech cemented the goodwill.

Shoot the piano player

If the evening had a single villain, it was likely Chloe Flower, the ivory-tinkler assigned to hasten the end of the speeches with jaunty muzak. Yeoh, Farrell and many others demanded she cool her fingers; the most compelling case was made by Austin Butler, whose moving tribute to his late mother was accompanied by an increase in volume from Flower.

“You could at least play Suspicious Minds or something,” said Butler.