Awards Season Revs Up on Golden Globes Weekend: ‘It’s F—king Crazy’

Joel Edgerton stood toward the back of a ballroom at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills on Saturday afternoon and grinned. “This is f–king crazy,” the “Train Dreams” star said, looking at a room full of awards-contending actors, directors and producers, along with enough voters and press to make it worth their while. “It’s really insane.”

That wasn’t a criticism or complaint, mind you – just an acknowledgement that the homestretch of the 2025-26 awards season has arrived with a vengeance. It started right after the holidays, with the Palm Springs International Film Festival beginning on Jan. 2 and its annual awards ceremony taking place on the 3rd, less than 24 hours before the Critics Choice Awards were held 100 miles away back in Los Angeles.

Then there was a solid week of major nominations (SAG’s Actor Awards followed by the Directors Guild and Producers Guild) leading into Golden Globes weekend, where other awards bodies have always taken advantage of the influx of stars to hold their own events.

This year, the new year’s restart has seemed particularly frantic, culminating with the weekend’s barrage of private parties around a trio of significant events: the AFI Awards luncheon on Friday, the Film Independent Spirit Awards Nominees Brunch on Saturday morning and the BAFTA Tea Party on Saturday afternoon.

Edgerton was there for all three, and so were we.

AFI Awards

“I think the fear of winning is a big thing at awards shows,” said “The Diplomat” star Rufus Sewell, standing in the lobby of a ballroom at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills on Friday afternoon. “It’s much better to already have won.”

That preferential state was occupied by most of the people who came to the Four Seasons for the AFI Awards luncheon, an annual event that involves no suspense, no envelopes being opened and no acceptance speeches. Instead, representatives gathered from the films and television programs that had been singled out by the American Film Institute for its 2025 top 10 lists, asked to do nothing more strenuous than schmooze, watch some clips and listen to Ava DuVernay and Rich Frank tell everyone why they’d made the list.

That made it a low-pressure event, even for the representatives of “Wicked: For Good,” “Avatar: Fire and Ash” and “Jay Kelly,” who’d learned a couple of hours earlier that their films had not been nominated for Producers Guild Awards. But there was lots of energy devoted to the schmoozing part of the event; in fact, no sooner had Sewell told us about how nice it was to know you were a winner than he headed across the lobby to talk to Stellan Skarsgård, who was at the lunch not for “Sentimental Value” (which wasn’t eligible under AFI rules) but for the TV series “Andor.”

Elsewhere, “One Battle After Another” star Chase Infiniti made a beeline for the “Sinners” table; “Sinners” writer-director Ryan Coogler talked to “It Was Just an Accident” filmmaker Jafar Panahi (who received an honorary award) and his translator; George Clooney huddled with Ethan Hawke and then with Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow; Josh Safdie, director of the most hyperkinetic movie on the AFI list, “Marty Supreme,” talked with Clint Bentley, director of the quietest one, “Train Dreams”; and Diego Luna and Edward James Olmos wrapped Guillermo del Toro in a long embrace.

When Luna and Olmos left, del Toro sighed. “I had a rough end of the year,” said the “Frankenstein” director, whose older brother unexpectedly died in late December. “It’s been really traumatic. I’m showing my face as little as possible.”

Del Toro’s star, Jacob Elordi, was to all appearances one of the room’s most popular (and given his height, most visible) occupants. He made the rounds, chatting with Adam Sandler, with Michael B. Jordan, with Clooney, with Jeff Goldblum, with Teyana Taylor – and with 12-year-old “Hamnet” star Jacobi Jupe, who had made a beeline for Elordi after spotting him.

A few minutes later, Jupe admitted that he was indeed a big fan of “Frankenstein.”  “I loved it.”

And does Elordi love “Hamnet” in return?

A grin. “Well, he hasn’t seen it yet. But he will.”

Tables were arranged to make mixing easy: “Sinners” next to “Bugonia,” which was across the aisle from special honoree “It Was Just an Accident”; “The Diplomat” next to “Marty Supreme,” which was across from “Train Dreams,” which was next to “The Pitt,” a show that co-creator R. Scott Gemmill said was in the middle of shooting its final episode of Season 2.

Everybody watched exceptionally well-chosen clips of the honored projects, then got a final benediction from special guest Carol Burnett: “The world is a better place for having heard your voices.”

Film Independent Spirit Awards Nominees Brunch

Saturday morning brought a slight detour away from the Four Seasons and a mile and a half north to the London Hotel in West Hollywood. It was also a detour of sorts because the biggest movies of awards season – “One Battle After Another,” “Sinners,” “Wicked: For Good” – are too expensive to qualify for the Indie Spirit Awards.

But the “Train Dreams” crew was there, and acting nominees Ethan Hawke (for the TV show “The Lowdown” rather than the movie “Blue Moon”), Rose Byrne (“If I Had Legs I’d Kick You”), Zoey Deutch (“Nouvelle Vague”), Rebecca Hall (Peter Hujar’s Day”), Tessa Thompson (“Hedda”), Taylor Dearden (“The Pitt”), Eva Victor (“Sorry, Baby”) and Stephen Graham (“Adolescence”).

Natasha Rothwell and Hannah Einbinder gave out $75,000 in filmmaker grants, making this the only weekend awards-related party to actually give out awards. “Lucky Lu” producer Tony Yang teared up as he gave a simultaneously emotional and amusing speech that also included a couple of shots at AI and its computer-generated “actress,” Tilly Norwood. (“F–k Tilly Norwood!” said Rothwell when she returned to the stage to present the next award.)

BAFTA Tea Party

Back to the Four Seasons – in fact, back to the same room in which the AFI Awards took place – the BAFTA tea party was the only one to serve Welsh rarebit and the only one to have a claw machine filled with travel vouchers in the foyer. It also brought the biggest crowd, including a late appearance by Leonardo DiCaprio, who immediately changed the center of gravity in the room when he came in a side door and found himself surrounded by well-wishers and looky-loos who craned to catch a glimpse of the “One Battle” star.

Elsewhere in the room, Benicio del Toro congratulated “The Secret Agent” director Kleber Mendonça Filho and actor Wagner Moura; Kate Hudson and Aimee Lou Wood shared an embrace and then were joined by “Sentimental Value” director Joachim Trier and his wife, Helle Bendixen Trier, who have temporarily settled in Los Angeles with their 1- and 4-year-old daughters; and Mark Hamill took up residence at a corner table, posing for photos with a string of admirers.

It made for a lot of instant mutual-appreciation societies – which was the best part, Joel Edgerton explained. “I sometimes have to deal with anxiety in these situations,” he said. “But I just met the actor from ‘No Other Choice,’ which I loved.” (That actor, Lee Byung-hun, is a big fan of “Train Dreams.”) “I don’t think art should be a competition, but it’s great to meet these people.”  

A few minutes later, Lee Sang-il, the director of the Oscar-shortlisted Japanese film “Kokuho,” explained through a translator how he got Tom Cruise to host a screening of his film: He liked Cruise’s speech at the Governors Awards and sent him a copy of the film, which features Cruise’s “Last Samurai” co-star Ken Watanabe. But when we asked what he thought of the BAFTA soirée, he didn’t need the translator. Instead, he looked around the room, grinned, and delivered an answer in English that echoed what Joel Edgerton had said, only without the profanity.

“It is crazy,” he said.

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