Lunch Break Videos: Some memorable backstage moments from the Golden Globe Awards

The Golden Globe Award nominations will be announced early this morning and I will post a recap of who got the nod fairly early.

The Globes are the most fun to cover of all the award shows because it is just three straight hours of handing out awards in so many categories. The movies are divided up into drama and comedy or musical so you have twice as many winners in the best picture and best actor and actress categories.

There are also television categories which makes for the most star-studded event of the year. I’ve been at maybe five or six of the ceremonies and can assure you that the fun continues backstage where the winners face the international press.

Here is a sampling of what goes on:

I was standing about a foot away from Eddie Murphy backstage and glancing over at Beyonce and Jennifer Hudson leaning against a wall. They were waiting for the cast of Grey’s Anatomy to wrap up with the press backstage at the 2007 Golden Globe Awards.

Then, it happened: Isaiah Washington took the mic and said: “I did not call T.R. a faggot.”

It was completely bizarre and everyone looked mighty uncomfortable. You felt so badly for T.R. Knight who was also up there with fellow cast members including Eric Dane, Patrick Dempsey and Katherine Heigl along with the show’s creator Shondra Rhimes.

The cast had remained mum about an on-set scuffle a few months earlier between Washington and Dempsey in which Isaiah was heard referring to Knight by that gay slur. The incident resulted in Knight coming out publicly and the cast seemed intent on getting on with business.

But Washington reignited a controversy and it resulted in him being written off the show at the end of that season.

I was not at the Globes in 2003 when Meryl Streep broke a long losing streak and won the supportive actress prize for Adaptation.

She had remarked onstage that it had been since the “Pleistocene Era” since she had won anything and she truly was surprised. She seemed to still be pulling herself together when she faced the backstage press a few moments later and that’s what makes this session feel so raw and so wonderful.

We learn a lot in this clip including the fact that Meryl had just wrapped Angels in America and flown directly from Rome for the Globes. She was also asked what her toughest role ever was and she said, surprisingly, that it was the film noir In the Still of the Night in which she had to be glamorous and constantly worry about how she looked. She found all of that rather boring.

And finally, here is Kate Winslet backstage after winning her Globe last year for Revolutionary Road. She had already won earlier in the evening in the supporting actress category for The Reader. Kate had been nominated SEVEN times previously and never won and was bowled over by winning her first and second Globes on the same night. My favorite part of this is when she talks about working with her husband Sam Mendes on Road. Kate’s second appearance came toward the end of a long night and I remember my legs getting numb because I was balancing a laptop on my lap in fairly tight quarters.

Good times!