Jessie Buckley winning a Golden Globe for her performance as Agnes Shakespeare in Chloé Zhao’s heart-rending Hamnet is a notable achievement.
Saoirse Ronan, up for Lady Bird in 2018, took the prize for actress in a comedy or musical, but this is the first time an Irish performer has grabbed the best actress in a drama gong.
Paul Mescal, an outsider to win, will be happy with the best supporting actor nomination for his role as William Shakespeare opposite the Kerrywoman.
Both results were expected. The happy surprise for the Hamnet team was passing out Ryan Coogler’s Sinners to take best drama film. It was clear from the bouncy reaction at the Hamnet table that they did not expect to grab that prize. Even Steven Spielberg, a producer on the film, seemed boyishly elated.
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All the talk will now be about whether Buckley can move on to become the first Irish woman to win best actress at the gongs that really matter. The Globes set the tone for the race to the Oscars in mid-March. Nominations arrive on January 22nd.
Buckley will, barring meteor strike, walk into the last five and, at an unbackable 1/7 to win with some bookies, compete tensely all the way through to spring. Mescal, though also likely to be shortlisted, will, quoted as long as 16/1 to win, have a more relaxed passage round the glamorous bun fights.
Buckley was immediately inked in as likely winner of the Oscar when Hamnet premiered at the Telluride Film Festival in late August. This win keeps her on track, but it would be wrong to read too much into the weekend’s results.
[ Hamnet review: Five stars for Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal’s devastating filmOpens in new window ]
In 2025, Sean Baker’s Anora, eventual winner of five Oscars, including that for best picture, went away without a single Globe.
Neither of last year’s best actress winners – split between drama and musical or comedy – converted into Oscar wins.
Though shaken up and expanded after various controversies in 2022, the Globes are voted upon by only a little more than 400 journalists as opposed to the 10,000 industry professionals who compose the Academy Awards electorate.
Moreover, Rose Byrne, the only actor who could plausibly catch Buckley, was also a winner this weekend for If I Had Legs I’d Kick you. That triumph in the musical or comedy actress category keeps the Australian performer at Buckley’s shoulder.
Elsewhere, the Globes buttressed the growing belief that Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another – winner of four statuettes – is on an unstoppable run towards glory. The sprawling action flick, which took best musical or comedy, is not quite the juggernaut that Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer became two years ago, but, like that film, it is a popular success directed by a filmmaker seen as “overdue” for Academy recognition.
Could Hamnet still pull a surprise win on Oscar weekend? To this point, the only serious challenger to One Battle seemed to be Sinners, but it should be noted that Zhao’s film has done extraordinary well with audience prizes at film festivals, winning at the BFI London Film Festival and the hugely influential Toronto International Film Festival.
This film works with punters. And the Academy voters, for all their pretentions, are still punters. Don’t count it out.
