Golden Globes: Tina Fey and Amy Poehler's Monologue Address HFPA Controversy, 'Music' Nominations

Streamed via a split-screen in front of a Golden Globes crowd of first responders, with hosts Tina Fey at New York's Rainbow Room and Amy Poehler in Los Angeles at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, the Golden Globes monologue looked a little different this year, but Fey and Poehler still brought their signature barbed wit despite being on opposite coasts. "This is the 78th annual Hunger Games!" the duo joked as they opened the show. "The technology is so great, you are never going to be able to tell the difference, it's going to be smooth sailing," Poehler quipped just before a technical glitch marred the first award of the night.

"Normally this room is full of celebrities," Fey said, explaining that the physical audience this year was full of "smoking hot first responders and essential workers." Poehler thanked them for all the hard work that they were doing and "that you're here so the celebrities can stay safely at home."

"It's usually like Meryl Streep, just hammered... Oprah Winfrey just writing her name all over the tablecloth in pen," they joked. "Tarantino touching people's feet." According to Fey, "those b—es are messy."

They also acknowledged the blurred lines between television and film this year, with theaters shut down and everyone binging media on their phones at home. "If you're like, 'Mario Lopez is surprisingly good in this,' it's TV," said Fey. "If it's a play that has been turned into a movie, but you watch it on TV, it's called a plovie," finished Poehler."

Fey and Poehler didn't shy away from addressing the recent controversy around the lack of diversity in the 2021 nominations and how that's a pervasive issue in the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. "90 international — no Black journalists — who attend movie junkets each year in search of a better life," they joked. "We say around 90 because a couple of them are just ghosts and it's rumored the German member is just a sausage." They also acknowledged the fact that "a lot of flashy garbage got nominated" while "a number of black projects were overlooked."

"There are no Black members of the HFPA," they said. "We know your workplace is the back booth of a French McDonald's but you gotta change that."

This is the fourth time that Poehler and Fey have hosted the Golden Globes as a team. Poehler told Seth Meyers in January that they had no idea how they were going to pull it off in a pandemic. "We just have a few final questions," she explained. "When, how, why, where and what? Just those — that's all we need to find out. But we're going to figure it out."