LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
The Golden Globe Awards will be given out tonight in Los Angeles. The ceremony has traditionally been a time to celebrate great performances, gawk at stunning gowns and watch A-list celebrities make their way down the red carpet. But Hollywood and Harvey Weinstein is where the #MeToo movement got a second incarnation, and the movement will likely take center stage tonight. Rebecca Keegan covers Hollywood for Vanity Fair, and she joins us now from Los Angeles. Welcome to the program.
REBECCA KEEGAN: Hi there.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: So it's a big night. But will the outcry over sexual harassment and assault be top of the mind for actresses and actors there tonight?
KEEGAN: I think it's going to be the No. 1 issue both visually and in terms of what people are talking about. Visually, the actors and actresses are wearing black to show solidarity with victims of sexual misconduct. They're wearing pins that say, time's up, which is the name of an initiative launched by women in the entertainment business to fight sexual misconduct.
And then, in terms of the speeches, I'm expecting people to really engage on this issue, which is something that they haven't done in the three months since The New York Times broke the Harvey Weinstein story. There have been some other nontelevised awards shows. And for the most part, people haven't been talking about it.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Why not?
KEEGAN: Well, that's been the million-dollar question. You know, I was interested because last year's awards season was really dominated by talk of Donald Trump and some of his policies. Really, it's easier in Hollywood, which is predominantly liberal, to take aim at a Republican president than it is to take aim at, say, your own agency or an executive who might give you a job or a producer who might hire you. But the Golden Globes seems to be the place where, particularly, the women in Hollywood have just sort of locked arms and said, OK, guys, let's jump.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: So when you mention that this is going to be a big issue tonight, do you have any inside info on how this is going to be tackled and approached?
KEEGAN: Well, one of the people I think who probably has a tricky job is the host, Seth Meyers, who is sort of so aware of the limitations of being a white, straight male in an awakened era that he has a segment on his late night show called Jokes Seth Can't Tell. So the tricky thing is, how do you engage in this issue with comedy in a way that keeps the mood light but also takes notice of what everybody in the room is talking about and thinking about?
GARCIA-NAVARRO: What about the audience watching at home? As you mention, people tune in because they want the glamour, because they want the laughs and maybe less so to see soul searching and sermonizing.
KEEGAN: I mean, this is the dilemma. I think it was a dilemma last year, as well, when politics so dominated award season. The previous year, the topic of Oscars So White came up a lot. People at home, many times, are watching to get a break from the world. They love to look at beautiful gowns and maybe hear a funny monologue. And do they really want to engage with this stuff?
I think another sort of group of people who have a really tricky job on Sunday night are the producers of shows like E! "Live From The Red Carpet," who are programming for a group of people who have the expectation of this sort of levity and fun, but they're going to be looking at their favorite actors dressed in black and wanting to talk about something that's really quite serious.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Is this then a bad night for designers? Because they do use this to sort of showcase their designs. And if everyone's wearing black, or they might be wearing gowns that they had previously, this might not be such a big night for the fashion world.
KEEGAN: Yeah, I think the fashion world is sort of confronting a dilemma with this. I mean, even in a logistical sense, a lot of people already had their gowns picked out. In fact, if you looked at the Palm Springs Film Festival Gala pictures, which happened just after the first of the year, there were some fabulous dresses. And some of them were dresses - very colorful, beautiful dresses people had planned to wear for the Golden Globes before the wear-black plan came into view. So folks have had to scramble stylists, tailors, designers to quickly pull together looks that somehow say both I'm toppling the patriarchy, and I'm glamorous, which is a hard, you know, needle to thread.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: It's a hard needle to thread, indeed. All right. That's Rebecca Keegan, Hollywood reporter for Vanity Fair. Thanks so much.
KEEGAN: Thank you.
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