LITTLE GOLD WOMEN

The Golden Globes are always long and always chaotic, and always, always controversial. They get it wrong more often than they don’t, and when they get it wrong they really get it wrong. Like this year’s snubbing of Michaela Coel’s indelible turn in the mini-series I May Destroy You – a performance that she also wrote, directed and created. “Awards are insane,” sighs Taylour Paige, who stars in the lauded Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom , alongside Viola Davis and the late Chadwick Boseman. “If we are going to take them so seriously, I just hope that people are recognised for how hard they worked,” she adds. “Someone like Michaela Coel, who ripped herself open to give us that.”

But sometimes the Globes get it right, which they did only a few weeks ago. For the first time since 1984, when Barbra Streisand was named Best Director, a woman was crowned the year’s best filmmaker. When Chloé Zhao ascended the virtual podium as the victor for her intimate and moving drama , she had already made history three times over: as the first Asian woman nominated for the prize, and as the first woman of colour and the second woman , to win the accolade. As Melissa Silverstein, founder of the Women and Hollywood initiative explains, there was a weight to Zhao’s triumph. “Awards are important,” she says. “They are a barometer the culture uses to say who is worthy.”