For actresses Da’Vine Joy Randolph of “The Holdovers” and Ayo Edebiri of “The Bear,” the first time was the charm at the Golden Globe Awards. At the 81st annual Golden Globes ceremony—which took place Sunday at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California—Randolph and Edebiri won Golden Globe Awards for their very first respective Golden Globe nominations. They were the only Black people to win at the show, which was televised in the United States on CBS and streamed on Paramount+ With Showtime.

Coincidentally, Randolph and Edebiri each won for portraying cooking employees in their Golden Globe-winning roles. 

In the Focus Features comedy/drama “The Holdovers,” which is set in the early 1970s, Randolph plays Mary Lamb, the outspoken and compassionate head cook at a Boston-area boarding school, who is grieving over the death of her military son in the Vietnam War. Randolph won the Golden Globe for Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role in any Motion Picture. 

In the FX on Hulu comedy series “The Bear,” Edebiri portrays eager and intelligent Sydney Adamu, a Culinary Institute of America-trained chef, who works at a Chicago restaurant and has to deal with her neurotic boss and co-workers. Edebiri received the Golden Globe for Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy.

In her acceptance speech, Randolph thanked her colleagues, family members, and friends while also giving a special mention to “The Holdovers” director Alexander Payne for casting her in the role: “Thank you for giving me the opportunity to portray this beautiful and flawed woman.” 

Randolph added, “And to the character of Mary: Oh, Mary, you have changed my life and made me feel seen in so many ways that I never imagined. I hope I helped you all find your inner Mary, because there is a little bit of her in all of us.”

Angela Bassett, who won the same Golden Globe Award in 2023 (for her role as Queen Ramonda in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”) was one of the presenters who gave Randolph the award. It was a full-circle moment of Black excellence, since Bassett and Randolph are both graduates of Yale Drama School.

A visibly nervous Edibiri thanked her family and colleagues in her acceptance speech. But she also gave a shout-out to people who normally don’t get acknowledgement in these types of acceptance speeches: “All of my agents’ and managers’ assistants … thank you for answering my crazy, crazy emails.”

Nominated movies and TV shows with a Black-majority cast and a Black director or Black showrunner didn’t win any awards at the ceremony. The Warner Bros. Pictures musical “The Color Purple,” the Orion Pictures comedy/drama “American Fiction,” and the Netflix drama film “Rustin” were noticeably snubbed by the contest. 

The ABC comedy series “Abbott Elementary” was also passed over for Golden Globe wins in 2024. It’s a change of fortune for “Abbott Elementary,” which won three out of its five nominations—including Best Comedy Series—at the 2023 Golden Globe Awards. At the 2024 Golden Globe Awards, “Abbott Elementary” had two nominations: Best Comedy Series and Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy, which was a category won by “Abbott Elementary” star/showrunner Quinta Brunson in 2023.

In 2024, “The Bear” also replaced “Abbott Elementary” as the Golden Globes champ for Best Comedy Series. Although “The Bear” does not have a Black showrunner, “The Bear” co-star Lionel Boyce (who portrays pastry chef Marcus Brooks) was chosen to give the acceptance speech for the show. After saying the usual thanks to industry colleagues, Brooks concluded the short speech by commenting: “Most importantly, I just want to say thank you to the entire restaurant community. We play these characters for a couple of hours a day, for a couple of months out of the year, but this y’all’s reality—the highs and the lows. Thank you for embracing us while we tell this story.”

Two new categories were added for the Golden Globes in 2024: Cinematic and Box-Office Achievement (which went to the Warner Bros. comedy “Barbie”) and Best Performance in Stand-Up Comedy on Television, which was awarded to Netflix’s “Ricky Gervais: Armageddon.” The Black nominees in the stand-up comedy category were also for Netflix specials: “Trevor Noah: Where Was I,” “Chris Rock: Selective Outrage,” and “Wanda Sykes: I’m an Entertainer.”

This year’s Golden Globe Awards ceremony is part of a new era for the show. In June 2023, Dick Clark Productions and investment firm Eldridge Industries bought the Golden Globe Awards from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), which disbanded as a result of the sale. The year 2023 also marked the end of NBC’s longtime partnership with the Golden Globe Awards. CBS’s previous history with the Golden Globes was televising the show in 1981 and 1982.

The termination of the HFPA followed years of controversies over corruption and racism that plagued the HFPA. In February 2021, The Los Angeles Times revealed that the HFPA did not have any Black members for about 20 years, and HFPA members received money and gifts under circumstances with questionable ethics. Industry-wide boycotts of the Golden Globe Awards soon followed, with NBC dropping the show in 2022. After the HFPA invited more Black people and other people of color into its voting group and revised its ethics policies, NBC brought back the Golden Globe Awards in 2023, but opted not to renew its contract with the show beyond that year. 

The people who vote for the Golden Globe Awards are still international journalists (several are former HFPA members), but there are many more Golden Globe voters than there were in previous years. At the time that the HFPA owned the Golden Globe Awards in 2023, there were 193 voters, of which 7.7% were Black. According to Dick Clark Productions, the 2024 Golden Globe Awards had about 300 voters, of which 11% are Black. Many people at the 2024 Golden Globes seemed to be unaware that the non-existent HFPA did not vote for the nominations or awards at this year’s ceremony, because the HFPA was thanked in several of the winners’ speeches.

Stand-up comedian Jo Koy hosted the show and made no mention of the Golden Globes’ past racial controversy in his 10-minute opening monologue. His only mention of Black-oriented entertainment was a snide remark about “The Color Purple.” 

After mentioning that “The Color Purple” stars Fantasia Barrino, Danielle Brooks, and Colman Domingo were in the audience, Koy said: “By the way, the color purple is also what happens to your butt when you take [diabetes medication] Ozempic.” 

The joke got a lukewarm response from the in-person audience. Koy seemed to acknowledge this tepid response, when he said immediately: “Half the room is cringing, and the other half is like, ‘I’ve got to get home and get my selfie stick [to look at my rear end]. … Man, he was lying, it’s more like magenta.’”

Black presenters at the show were Bassett, Daniel Kaluuya, Shameik Moore, Andra Day, Jon Batiste, Issa Rae, Don Cheadle, and Oprah Winfrey.

A complete list of Golden Globe winners can be found on the show’s official website.