We all may want to forget the red carpet at Sunday night’s Golden Globes, or just count it as a blip in the history of red carpets. All the pandemic restrictions, the one part in person, one part on Zoom nature of the thing mostly just reminded us of the predicament we’re all in. But then we’d have to forget Viola Davis’s bright Lavie by CK or Amanda Seyfried’s lovely Oscar de la Renta or Cynthia Erivo’s spacey Valentino, and that’s no fun either. We’d also be passing up a chance to use this pause in the regularly scheduled programming to celebrate more creative takes on the staid format that might just change the preshow for the better, once the show finally does go on.
For a long, long time, beginning in the mid-1990s, beautiful ghoul Joan Rivers and her daughter Melissa Rivers presided over the preshow. They were the voice of the viewers at home, pulling fun interviews out of attendees and also articulating the little judgements that viewers had but couldn’t share widely. It raised the stakes of the red carpet over the years, and all the actors began hiring stylists and playing it safe. By the time social media made it easy for everyone to be their own Rivers, all that judgement was chafing.
The last half decade or so has seen an effort to “fix” the red carpet, to imbue the spectacle of the Hollywood award show with some substance. The main avenue for this tends to be a hashtag, for better or worse: there was #AskHerMore in 2015, the more broadly focused #OscarsSoWhite the same year, and then the cultural wave of #MeToo in 2017, which also led to the birth of #TimesUp. All of them contributed to the efforts to pick apart the sexism and racism of awards shows, thread by thread, mani cam by glam cam.
Then came the pandemic, and all went quiet on the red-carpet front.
Well, mostly. There were valiant efforts to fill the void on both fronts. The Emmys marched bravely on with photo shoots organized in a star’s own chosen space. Stylists continue to pull looks and stars continue to be some of the best models a brand could get.
By the Golden Globes everyone seemed to have figured out that, even with a nation still at home in sweatpants, it was okay to get dressed again. (Although the Zoom backgrounds were fittingly nondescript. Most learned their class war lesson from last spring all too well—minus Kate Hudson). The preshows on E! and NBC were relatively low-key affairs that attempted to reconstruct what came before, standing outside the Beverly Hilton that, for the most part, was empty. But there were highlights—chief among them were moments of storytelling around how a look came together, personalized photo shoots, and some key messages transmitted from home.
With so much of the red-carpet tradition stripped away, which parts of it do we actually want back? I suppose that first, one must ask oneself what a red carpet is for. These days, it’s a brand-boosting moment for fashion as much as it is for the actors themselves. But as a viewer, the thrill is in the “what are they wearing” of it all, and also, who are the stars talking to? Who are they not talking to? Who brought their mom? Who brought a totally new date? Who is stepping on whose dress? Who managed to be charming in those stilted red-carpet interviews? Most of that was impossible during this year’s Globes, unless you’ve ever been a part of Saturday Night Live, apparently. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler hosted from different coasts, Maya Rudolph and Kenan Thompson did a very handsy bit, and Kristen Wiig made a late appearance with Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar costar Annie Mumolo. The Globes became a de facto reminder that it’s crucial to have the stars present and mingling, even with so little of it actually happening.
With the red carpet largely consisting of Giuliana Rancic and Karamo Brown interviewing gorgeous bobbing heads blown up on screens, it’s hard for anyone to argue to keep the teleconferencing—who would want to watch actors on yet another screen? On the other hand, the Zoom-era red carpet is a lot less frenetic. Sure there’s the lack of spontaneity, but that will come back. Who misses the part where Rancic disassociates from, say, Amanda Seyfried because a producer is in her ear making sure she gets that interview with Nicole Kidman? Or the yelling over crowds and publicists and photographers and camera people? If there’s a way to adjust the dials where the hosts could be in a calm place, physically and mentally, for interviews while the mingling happened elsewhere, and into that space, insert something more energetic than the same old rote interviews—quizzes! Games! Putting two actors in conversation! A moment to speak from the heart about an issue close to one’s heart! Then maybe we’d have something here.
And what the E! preshow really did have in spades this year was its full attention on fashion. Sure, in some ways they were just killing time. But fashion journalist Zanna Roberts Rassi was on hand to offer background on several actors’ looks—complete with added media from the getting-ready portion of the day. Into the void where red-carpet chaos would usually go, they poured…information! I found myself wishing they had leaned on this part even harder. Those who care about the fashion would especially enjoy hearing from the stylists, what went into each look, incorporating little videos about the process from the actors and their teams.
The red-carpet fashion didn’t get all that weird or surprising, even on a virtual red carpet, which suggests it probably never will again. But it seems like the mini photo shoots that many stars participated in will stick around, which is quite fun. No longer is one analyzing the choice in dress and jewels and hair; one is analyzing their whole artistic vision, now with more money behind it than your average Instagram shoot. Some versions of these photo shoots have been happening since the invention of Instagram, but the ones created for the Emmys and especially the Globes have been far more elaborate. (I suppose the only reason they wouldn’t stage such shoots in one’s hotel or home after getting this dressed up is that they have an awards show to get to. Not everyone is secure enough to skip the whole rigmarole in favor of their own art direction, like Beyoncé does.)