Shira Haas loses Golden Globes award to Taylor-Joy from Queen’s Gambit

Shira Haas, the first Israeli actress to be nominated for a Golden Globe, who competed in the Best Performance by an Actress in a Limited Series, Anthology Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television category for the Netflix series Unorthodox, lost the award to Anya Taylor-Joy of The Queen’s Gambit at a ceremony on Sunday night, but said she felt honored just to nominated.

Following the announcement of the winner, Haas posted on Instagram, "What a magical night. Thank you for the unbelievable honor of being nominated alongside these incredible women."

 

 

 

 

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Unorthodox, which was nominated in the Best Limited Series category, was also bested in that category by The Queen’s Gambit,  a series about a female chess prodigy. Last year, Unorthodox was awarded an Emmy in this category.

Haas, who went to Los Angeles to take part in the event, accompanied by her agent, Zohar Yakobson, said Saturday night that she "feels immense pride as an Israeli actress to represent and take part in this historic moment" and that she  "so appreciates the support and love" she has received from Israel "throughout all these years and especially throughout the past year.”

She posted a picture on Instagram of herself wearing a black Chanel gown for the ceremony and E! featured pictures of Haas, among many stars, getting ready for the ceremony. These included  a picture of her in the gown with the caption, “The nominee ‘practiced sitting for Zoom’ in her gown, according to E!'s Zanna Roberts Rassi. ‘Because no one is walking!’ “  She also wore a Chanel gown, this one with a sparkly floral pattern, for the Emmys in 2020, when she was nominated for the same role and attended the ceremony via Zoom from Tel Aviv.

Haas played Esty in Unorthodox, a young Hasidic woman from Brooklyn in an unhappy marriage,  who flees to live a secular life in Berlin. The limited series was based on an autobiography by the same name written by Deborah Feldman, who left Orthodoxy with her child.

The other nominees in her category were Oscar winners Nicole Kidman and Cate Blanchett, as well as Daisy Edgar-Jones, showing that Haas is truly in the big leagues. The Golden Globes are awarded by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), a group of fewer than 100 international journalists covering the entertainment industry in the US.

The 25-year-old actress has had a stellar year. She won the Best Actress Award at the Tribeca Film Festival in April, which was also held online, for her performance in Ruthy Pribar's film, Asia and won a Best Supporting Actress Ophir Award in Israel for her performance in this movie.

The winners  of the Golden Globes were announced at a mostly virtual event Sunday night, which was held virtually due to the ongoing pandemic. Presenters spoke from the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles, hosted by Amy Poehler, and the Rainbow Room in New York, hosted by Tina Fey. Nominees participated via Zoom, with some masked people seated in each location.

A second Israeli moment came when Wonder Woman and Wonder Woman 1984 star Gal Gadot announced the winners in the Best Foreign Language Film category. The winner was Minari by Lee Isaac Chung, the story of Korean immigrants to Arkansas starring Steven Yeun, best known for his role on The Walking Dead. No Israeli film was nominated in the category this year, but several Israeli films have won the past, including Ephraim Kishon’s films Sallah Shabati in 1965 and The Policeman in 1972, and Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir in 2009.

Although this year, there was an ethnically and racially diverse group of nominees and winners — and with an unprecedented three women nominated for Best Director — it was recently reported that there are no black members of the HFPA, a fact which was referred to often during the night. Several officials of the HFPA came on stage early on, essentially to apologize for this.

Among the winners of color were the late Chadwick Boseman, who passed away from cancer in 2020 and received the award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture — Drama for his role in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Andra Day won the Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture — Drama for her portrayal of Billie Holiday in The United States vs. Billie Holiday. The winner for Best Motion Picture — Drama was Nomadland by Chinese director, Chloé Zhao, starring Frances McDormand as a woman traveling through the American West in a van and Zhao also won Best Director.

The winners included the comedy series, Schitt’s Creek, which won for Golden Globe for  Best Comedy Series. Dan Levy, one of the stars of the show about a billionaire Jewish family that goes broke and moves to a town in the middle of nowhere, said he hoped next year the Globes would be more inclusive. Catherine O’Hara won a Golden Globe for her performance as the matriarch of the family. After six seasons, the show has been garnering many awards this past year and swept the Emmys.

Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, won Best Movie — Comedy or Musical. It is a sequel to Borat and chronicles the further adventures of the fool from Kazakhstan during the final days of Donald Trump’s campaign. Baron Cohen thanked, among others, Rudolph Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer, whom he pranked in a particularly damning way, getting him to unzip his pants with an attractive young reporter (Maria Bakalova). Baron Cohen also won Best Actor in a Motion Picture — Musical or Comedy for the new Borat movie and joked that Donald Trump was contesting the results.

Aaron Sorkin won for Best Screenplay for The Trial of the Chicago 7, which also starred Baron Cohen as Abbie Hoffman, read a quote from Hoffman about democracy that he said Baron Cohen sent him during the filming.

Norman Lear, the enormously influential Jewish producer/writer/director, who created the groundbreaking series All in the Family, Good Times, Maude, The Jeffersons, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and others that brought issues of race, class, prejudice and sexism to the forefront of US television, received the Carol Burnett Award for Lifetime Achievement. The 98-year-old said, "I am convinced that laughter adds time to one’s life,” and thanked his collaborators. He was one of the many in Hollywood who tweeted his outrage about the all-white HFPA ahead of the ceremony.  

The US remake of the Israeli series, Your Honor, was nominated for a Golden Globe for its star, Bryan Cranston, but did not win.

The Globes have had a checkered history. Although they have cleaned up their act in recent years, they were once known as “The Golden Bribes,” meaning it was thought that it was possible simply to buy votes with cash and perks. Suspicion of bribery was particularly strong in 1982 when the Golden Globes gave the New Star of the Year award to Pia Zadora, a petite blonde then married to the film’s producer, Israeli multi-millionaire businessman Meshulam Riklis, for the huge flop, Butterfly. Riklis had flown HFPA members to Las Vegas for the weekend and held a screening in his mansion.

More recently, a 2013 lawsuit by Michael Russell, who was the organization’s publicist for 17 years, alleged that, “HFPA members abuse their positions and engage in unethical and potentially unlawful deals and arrangements which amount to a ‘payola’ scheme. ” The HFPA settled with him. Still, in spite of the HFPA’s history, the ceremony and awards receive a great deal of publicity, particularly since they are seen as predictive of the Oscars, the nominations for which will be announced on March 15, as part of the pandemic-delayed awards season.