Golden Globes 2021: Three female directors make history in nominations

Three women have been nominated for best director at the Golden Globe awards – the first time more than one has been shortlisted in a single year.

Regina King, Chloe Zhao and Emerald Fennell are up for the prize, which had only previously nominated five women in the Golden Globes’ 77 year-history.

Mank leads the overall film awards race with six nominations, while The Crown leads the TV categories, also with six.

Sacha Baron Cohen and Olivia Colman are among the Britons up for acting awards.

The nominations belatedly fired the starting gun for this year’s Hollywood awards season, which has been delayed because of the coronavirus pandemic.

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Aaron Sorkin’s film drama The Trial of the Chicago 7 and TV comedy Schitt’s Creek also performed well, with five nominations each.

Baron Cohen, Colman and Anya Taylor-Joy all scooped two acting nominations each.

Baron Cohen said he felt “overwhelmed and humbled” to be recognised for the films Borat Subsequent Moviefilm and The Trial of the Chicago 7.

“These two films are different, but they share a common theme,” he wrote on Twitter. “Sometimes we have to protest injustice with our own farce.”

He went on to joke that he had already hired Rudy Giuliani, former President Trump’s lawyer, to contest the results. The star also has a third nomination, as a producer of the Borat sequel.

Taylor-Joy, meanwhile, was shortlisted for Netflix’s chess drama The Queen’s Gambit and for the Jane Austen film adaptation Emma.

Colman, who won best actress in a TV drama for playing the Queen in Netflix’s The Crown last year, could repeat that this year, and is also shortlisted for her forthcoming film The Father.

Four of Colman’s The Crown co-stars were also nominated – Emma Corrin (Princess Diana), Josh O’Connor (Prince Charles), Gillian Anderson (Margaret Thatcher) and Helena Bonham Carter (Princess Margaret).

Bookmakers have also made the show’s fourth season the favourite to win best TV drama ahead of Lovecraft Country, The Mandalorian, Ozark and Ratched. That’s all despite a row over how the show portrays the Royal Family.

Series creator Peter Morgan said everyone involved in the Netflix series was “thrilled to be recognised in this way”.

“This season really seems to have resonated with audiences of all generations all around the world,” he said. “We could not be more grateful or more proud.”

Emerald Fennell will be familiar to The Crown viewers for playing Camilla Parker-Bowles. The Brit wasn’t nominated for her acting – but was nominated for Promising Young Woman, her first feature film as director.

She also wrote the dark comic thriller, and was previously chief writer on the second series of Killing Eve.

Film and TV fans will also know Regina King, who won an Oscar and a Golden Globe for acting in 2018’s If Beale Street Could Talk, and has now moved behind the camera with One Night in Miami.

And Chinese director Chloe Zhao has become the first woman of Asian descent to be up for the Golden Globes’ best director prize, for Nomadland.

Nomadland and Promising Young Woman are also nominated for best film drama alongside Mank, The Trial of the Chicago 7 and The Father.

The last female director to be nominated for best director was Ava DuVernay for Selma in 2014, and the only woman ever to have won is Barbra Streisand for Yentl in 1984.

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