The nominations for the 78th annual Golden Globe Awards were unveiled on Wednesday, and Netflix’s Emily in Paris ended up receiving two nominations – Best TV Series (Musical or Comedy) and Best Performance by an Actress in a TV series (Musical or Comedy).
The unusual nominations did not sit very well with audiences who were upset with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association – a 90-member group known, and often criticised for, unpredictable choices – for snubbing out favourites such as I May Destroy You and Bridgerton.
Read more – Every Pakistani girl wants to be ‘Emily in Paris’
Interestingly, even the writers on the show are surprised with the nominations.
“I’m a writer on the show. I tried to avoid reading its criticism, but I don’t live under a rock. It never occurred to me that our show would be nominated,” said Deborah Copakenn, a writer on the show.
In a piece for The Guardian, Copaken said: “Emily in Paris aired a few months after I’d spent June and July marching for racial justice through the streets of New York with my kids. I could definitely see how a show about a white American selling luxury whiteness, in a pre-pandemic Paris scrubbed free of its vibrant African and Muslim communities, might rankle. Our show also aired soon after I read Caste by Isabel Wilkerson and gobbled down Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You, a work of sheer genius about the aftermath of a rape. ‘That show,’ I told everyone who would listen, ‘deserves to win all the awards’.”
She continued: “When it didn’t, I was stunned. I May Destroy You was not only my favourite show of 2020. It’s my favourite show ever. It takes the complicated issue of rape – I’m a sexual assault survivor myself – and infuses it with heart, humour, pathos and a story constructed so well, I had to watch it twice, just to understand how Coel did it.”
Copaken added that though she is excited about the nomination, “but that excitement is now unfortunately tempered by my rage over Coel’s snub. I May Destroy You did not get one Golden Globe nod is not only wrong, it’s what is wrong with everything.”
Created by Darren Star of the Sex and the City fame, Emily in Paris follows Emily as she navigates her life in Paris and tries to add an “American touch” to the firm she works at. The series has been produced by the show’s star Lily Collins.
In November 2020, Netflix announced that it was renewing Emily in Paris for a second season.
Note – An earlier version of the story wrongly credited Abby Govindan as a writer on the show after she tweeted: “As the creator of Emily in Paris, can I just say…why the f*** were we nominated for a Golden Globe. I made that show as a prank.”
