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Golden Globes 2021
In a year of awful Golden Globes snubs, the complete shut-out of Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You was the most egregious. In fact, the I May Destroy You slight was so bad that even Emily in Paris writer Deborah Copaken felt the need to speak out and address it head-on. In a piece for The Guardian, Copaken expressed her “rage over Coel’s snub” and explained that its exclusion from the Golden Globes is yet another example of Hollywood’s overwhelming whiteness. The ball’s in your court, HFPA.
Copaken had plenty of reasons to be surprised on Wednesday morning as the Hollywood Foreign Press Announced the 2021 Golden Globe nominees. The very first project named was Emily in Paris, Netflix’s ultra-popular dramedy about an American marketing associate who moves to Paris for work. Emily in Paris went on to earn two Golden Globe nominations, one for Best Musical/Comedy series, and one for lead Lily Collins, both of which sent shockwaves through the critic community, which had basically written off the series as “fluff” when it debuted in the fall.
“Did I take the criticism of the show personally? Of course. Who wouldn’t? But also not,” wrote Copaken in her Guardian piece. “I could definitely see how a show about a white American selling luxury whiteness, in a pre-pandemic Paris scrubbed free of its vibrant African and Muslim communities, might rankle.”
Copaken added that Emily in Paris debuted shortly after she finished watching I May Destroy You, “a work of sheer genius about the aftermath of a rape” that solidified Coel’s status as an auteur. “‘That show,’ I told everyone who would listen, ‘deserves to win all the awards,'” she wrote. “When it didn’t, I was stunned. I May Destroy You was not only my favorite show of 2020. It’s my favorite show ever.”
“Now, am I excited that Emily in Paris was nominated? Yes. Of course. I’ve never been remotely close to seeing a Golden Globe statue up close, let alone being nominated for one,” continued Copaken. “But that excitement is now unfortunately tempered by my rage over Coel’s snub. That I May Destroy You did not get one Golden Globe nod is not only wrong, it’s what is wrong with everything.”
Ultimately, Copaken’s criticism of the HFPA goes beyond “race” or “even about racial representation in art.” What it comes down to, she writes, is that we “need to give awards to shows (and music and films and plays and musicals) that deserve them, no matter the color of the skin of their creators.”
“Is Hamilton great because Lin-Manuel Miranda is Puerto Rican? No. It’s great because it bangs,” she concludes. “By that same token, how anyone can watch I May Destroy You and not call it a brilliant work of art or Michaela Coel a genius is beyond my capacity to understand how these decisions are made.”
Read Deborah Copaken’s op-ed in The Guardian. Emily in Paris is available to stream on Netflix, while I May Destroy You is streaming on HBO Max.
