Golden Globes EPs On Nikki Glaser, Leo DiCaprio’s Viral Interaction, Clooney-Chalamet Bit, CBS News Joke, Awkward UFC Promo, Mystery DJ & More

Sunday’s Golden Globes ceremony on CBS, hosted by Nikki Glaser, provided some memorable moments with the typical mix of emotional speeches, WTF elements and viral memes. 

The morning after, executive producers Ricky Kirshner and Glenn Weiss spoke with Deadline to address some burning questions, like who was the mystery “Bar Mitzvah DJ” per the social media moniker, who was Leonardo DiCaprio talking to in the commercial break interaction that took over everyone’s online video feeds, and how did two of the standout on-stage bits come about — Glaser’s KPop Demon Hunters/Marty Supreme mashup song, interrupted by the latter’s co-star Fran Dresher, as well as George Clooney‘s reunion with Ocean’s co-star Don Cheadle and his banter with the winner in his category Timothée Chalamet. 

Deadline asked the producers whether Glaser, who is getting high marks for her monologue, will be back for a third hosting stint next year. The monologue included jabs at CBS News, which she said has won the award for “most editing” and referred to as “CBS News, America’s newest place to See B.S. News.”

Kirshner and Weiss discussed whether there was any pushback from the network to the jokes and spoke about a couple of segments that have received mixed reactions. That included UFC fighters Mackenzie Dern and Brian Ortega walking briefly on stage as “bodyguards” for presenters Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams, stars of Heated Rivalry, to promote the league’s arrival to CBS/Paramount+, the way Polymarket predictions were integrated in the telecast, and ET‘s Kevin Frazier and Variety’s Marc Malkin’s voiceover during winners’ walk on stage.

The duo also addressed the decision to cut the Original Score category from the telecast, with Sinners’ Ludwig Göransson receiving the award on stage during a commercial break.

DEADLINE: Let’s start with Nikki Glaser’s monologue. How was it crafted and did you have to give CBS News heads-up? How did that work out?

WEISS: I’ll just start by saying Nikki is so talented but also, she’s a really hard worker. She’s been working on the monologue for six weeks, doing sets and clubs. We’ve been previewing it on and off. And I can tell you, it’s changed so much because she rolled with response. She’s great, she’s funny, but she’s also smart enough to hear feedback and response and craft it a little bit. She put a lot of effort into it. I think that she did really great with it.

And as far of the CBS thing, literally, it was done in rehearsals in front of CBS, our execs. Everybody seemed to be okay with it. But I think the important part here is, part of her humor is self-deprecation, not just picking on other people. She made comments about her appearance and her monologue. She made comments about CBS. And I think that’s part of the whole bigger picture is that this is her style of comedy. No one’s assaulting anybody here.

DEADLINE: Speaking of being self-deprecating, Glaser braved another music performance this year. How did the KPop Demon Hunters/Marty Supreme skit with Fran Drescher come about?

KIRSHNER: After last year, the “Pope-ular” song went viral. She loved it, and she’s like, What do I do again? What do I sing? Obviously, KPop being used this year, and Marty Supreme ping pong. So the writers came up with this idea to combine the two, and Fran was a perfect person. I think the punchline of Fran saying, ‘Your voice is so annoying’ was brilliant, so it was nice of Fran to play along.

We do a lot of shows, you have this idea, that idea, what if we get so and so to do this? And most of the times they say, ‘No, I’m not interested.’ So we really appreciate Fran being a good sport and being part of it. And Nikki, once again, self-deprecating in terms of not being the greatest singer but playing along with the joke.

DEADLINE: Has Nikki been re-signed? Is she coming back next year?

KIRSHNER: We’re not in the Business Affairs department.

WEISS: We just woke up the morning after the show. I’m sure those discussions will start shortly. As far as we’re concerned, from our own point of view, Nikki is great. We’d love to have her back. We’d love to do many, many things with her. She’s wonderful.

DEADLINE: Who was the DJ? The music selection has gone viral, with viewers calling it “Bar Mitzvah DJ on steroids.” And how did you clear all those big songs?

KIRSHNER: First of all, there was no DJ, that was just music playbacks that were curated along the way, many ways.

There’s a difference between a play on which is, Macaulay Culkin “Return of the Mac” or Judd Apatow “APT.” And some of the winner music, which did fit a category and may not have quite fit the winner, because we don’t know who the winners are. So the idea was to make a party atmosphere out of it. In the past, sometimes the winner music, if you use the theme of a show was kind of a downer, and you have someone celebrating, walking from the back of the room, high-fiving people, that didn’t fit. So we were just trying to give the party a little party music.

DEADLINE: Was it easy to clear all those songs?

KIRSHNER: As you as you know, we all work for PMC, DCP, and they actually have a full-on clearance department that worked really hard on clearing all that starting a month ago.

WEISS: And there were changes up until the show based on clearances not coming through. Yes, clearance was a big part of the conversation of, how do we get the vibe and the tone that we want and also find stuff that we can clear?

DEADLINE: The decision to cut Original Score from the telecast, I’m sure was a hard one, but how did you make it and pick that specific category? And why did it take 30 or so minutes after the winner was announced in the room to acknowledge him on the telecast?

WEISS: First of all when the decision was made that this was going to happen, and this is not necessarily our choice, it’s a case of committee that we’re on with other people, other representations, like we have nothing to do with the nominations and all of that kind of stuff.

That said, when a decision was made that it had to happen, it was really important to us to treat it like the other awards. I’ve seen other shows hand out awards on a red carpet and just make a quick throw away out of it. I’ve seen stuff go to other ceremonies, but we, on purpose, wanted to do it in commercial, in the same room, in front of the same people, and make sure that we’re recording it complete with cutaways, like when he started thanking [filmmaker] Ryan Coogler, and we’re all over the cutaways of him and all that.

It’s really important for us that people can go online now, because this lives online, and be it as all of the others. I’m really happy to say that, just before these calls, I went online to make sure it’s up. And not only it’s up, but there’s already been, like, twenty some odd thousand views. And I went to Best Director to see what that got, and that got twenty some odd thousand views. My point is, in a very, very respectful way, if something had to happen, the way to handle it is to make it feel like everything else, and then get it online so that people can see it in exactly the same form as everything else.

KIRSHNER: To follow up on Glenn’s point, this isn’t something new in our industry. Almost every other award show hands out an award that’s not on TV, sometimes a week in advance, sometimes the morning of. We won a couple of Emmys that weren’t on the broadcast or a week before. So it’s not something new, it might be new for the Globes, because they’ve added a couple of categories over the years.

DEADLINE: Let’s talk about the length, because there were two winners who didn’t show up, and still, I think the show was about 20 minutes long. Is it getting unwieldy for you?

KIRSHNER: If you have X amount of words and X amount of acceptance speeches, and you want to give your host Nikki some times to shine, the math just winds up that way. That’s where you wind up. We had no pushback at all from the network. We had no pushback at all from the Globes organization, they were totally fine with it.

DEADLINE: Talk about the commercial break footage. And we need to know, who was Leo talking to in that viral moment?

WEISS: This is an element that, speaking of viral, I noticed over the years that people are really fascinated in celebs talking to other people and all that kind of stuff. In the week and month after the show in the last couple of years, I’ve seen clips of all of these mingling shots. We went out of our way to enhance that.

In the broadcast, it used to be one mingling shot, two or three cuts in it, and then commercial. We went to this four-box idea to really give you and everyone at home more of a glimpse into these real celebs and their real moments, and on that end, it’s been really successful.

In terms of who Leo was speaking to at that moment, I actually couldn’t tell you, because everybody during the commercial shifts their positions and goes and talks to other people and all. It was a fascinating moment that was caught and seems to have taken on a life of its own. But nobody was looking for anything that was hurtful to anybody. We were just trying to capture mingling as it occurred. And obviously it occurred there.

DEADLINE: Another standout moment was George Clooney’s intro. Was he always intended to do it with Don Cheadle? And how did the Timothée Chalamet bit come along?

WEISS: George was booked as our presenter for the final award, and in a conversation two days before, he had this epiphany that, hey, this would be fun. He walked into this and he said, I’m not talking out of school, but he literally thought Timothée was going to win. He says, I’m not going to beat him, so let’s have fun with that moment. He’s a true sport. He was very involved in the creation of this, and it really worked out well.

DEADLINE: And Don Cheadle, was he his choice or did you guys bring him in?

WEISS: Actually, he spoke to Don, and then came to us with the idea.

KIRSHNER: We appreciated the crowd giving Julia Roberts a standing ovation to play into the joke without even knowing it. It was a great moment.

DEADLINE: A couple of awkward moments. The UFC plug going into the Heated Rivalry presenters. It was clearly a promotion, but was it your choice how it played out?

WEISS: I’ll say this. We were creating this party atmosphere. We were trying to not just present everything as traditional award shows would present them, maybe taking a few attention-grabbing moments and all, and UFC is obviously entering a new thing with CBS and Paramount+, so they’re all partners.

So we basically decided to take two elements that are kind of hot right now, the Heated Rivalry, it’s insane what kind of attention it’s getting right now, to juxtapose it with that and create this moment together, we thought it was a fun little moment.

DEADLINE: You liked it the way it played out?

WEISS (laughs): I think we’re getting more questions about it than anything else. So it got attention, right?

DEADLINE: And the Heated Rivalry stars, did they participate in how their bit was created?

WEISS: Absolutely, we were moving back and forth with them. Ricky, you can talk more about that but the feedback to me was that this was so in line with their show, their brand and everything, so it was kind of fun for them.

KIRSHNER: A lot of times you write stuff for presenters and they are like, yeah, no, maybe, they add to it. So we worked with them a little bit on a couple of different ideas, and the one they signed off on was that. And then when they showed up for the rehearsal, they really committed to the bet. So it actually worked great.

DEADLINE: Were you involved in the Polymarket integration on the telecast? The odds and predictions interrupted the show a bit.

KIRSHNER: Did it really interrupt the show? Sorry, I have to disagree with that. There are many times where you’re showing tweets from home, hey, who’s going to win? Who’s going to this? It was a bumper going into the next commercial which set up the next award. Was there an element of it that was Polymarket, sure, but I don’t think it interrupted the show.

DEADLINE: The voiceover trivia while winners were walking to the stage also was not received very well, with the announcers sometimes still talking while the the acceptance speeches were starting. What is your assessment, and is this something that you want to tweak going forward?

WEISS: I think we’re ever evolving. And yes, we tweaked this year, we’ll tweak next year. Obviously feedback is important to us. What I do want to say about it though is, the Globes is a very different kind of room, and some of the walks — the people that in front are on stage in the same 10 seconds – 15 seconds that they are at the Dolby Theater on the Oscars, for example. But somebody seated in the back having to navigate these tables, some of those walks could be a minute and a half.

And in all honesty, what we were trying to do is help the audience with information, not just play music and see the person walking. And to make the analogy to a sporting event, you have a color commentator and a play-by-play person who, in-between plays are giving a little bit more information. And it’s not just dead air. That’s sort of the philosophy behind this. These two gentlemen have been on red carpets, and we’re on red carpet that night, and talked to almost all of the winners, so it just gives the audience a little bit more insight during a time that is being consumed anyway, we were aiming for added value.

Will that tweak that in the future? Probably, like everything does, we’re not like cookie-cutter producers who want to do the same thing every time. It’s always fun to invent. Sometimes things hit, sometimes things don’t. In our opinion, this is meant as an added value.

KIRSHNER: We were very careful, and maybe we missed the mark, but we were very careful to have them stop talking before any speech started. I can go and look at the tape but I hope that didn’t happen.

DEADLINE: Did anything surprise you last night? There were some great speeches, like Teyana Taylor, some unexpected winners.

KIRSHNER: I just think that, like in the case of last night, when you have, I think something like 11 actors getting a first time award, a director getting first-time award. There’s something so precious about those speeches when it’s their first time. And I think we were blessed by the award show gods, as we call them, with having so many folks having a first opportunity up there. And honestly, the speeches are everything, and that’s why we try to give them the reverence and the due that we can. And I think last night was full of that.

Note: Deadline, the Golden Globes and DCP are sister PMC companies.