Dwayne Johnson was the proudest dad on the Golden Globes stage Sunday night.
The actor watched from the front row as daughter Simone Garcia Johnson carried out her duties as the first-ever Golden Globes Ambassador. In her role, formerly called Miss Golden Globe, 16-year-old Simone stood behind each presenter to hand out a statuette to ceremony winners, then directed them off stage.
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Johnson also graced the stage with his oldest daughter to introduce her as the first title-holder. “Simone, I am so incredibly proud of you,” the Jumanji actor told his daughter.
Quite the moment for @TheRock as he introduces his daughter, and the very first #GoldenGlobes Ambassador, @SimoneGJohnson. pic.twitter.com/V3QO7LMT2B
โ Golden Globe Awards (@goldenglobes) January 8, 2018
Throughout the evening, Simone donned a modest black Fabiana Milazzo dress to keep with the #WhyWeWearBlack theme of the event and kept her hair down in flowing locks swept to one side. Ahead of the event, she told Refinery29 she would be wearing black to stand in solidarity with other attendees.
“I will be wearing black on the day of the Golden Globes. The movement is special,” she said. “One of my favorite things about it is, not only is it shedding light on sexual assault in Hollywood, but it is shedding light on sexual assault across all different work fields and pushing for equality by saying that this treatment of women is over.”
Simone’s commitment to aiding charitable causes is likely one of the reasons for her selection, as the Hollywood Foreign Press Association asks that future Golden Globes Ambassador titleholders be involved in philanthropic efforts.
For Simone, that will entail working with Global Girl Media, “an organization that works to empower young women from underserved communities in new media journalism,” she told the crowd Sunday.
The HFPA’s shift from Miss Golden Globe to Golden Globes Ambassador will also allow the group to adopt a more inclusive attitude, a change they it has considered for a while. “Now, it’s gender-neutral, and the ambassador could be a woman, a man, a transgender,” Anke Hofmann, vice president of the HFPA told the New York Times.
Simone was told she’d been awarded the ambassador title on her 16th birthday.
“It was surreal and I was immediately so excited,” she told E! News.
Each year, the Golden Globe Ambassador title, in keeping with the Miss Golden Globe tradition, will be bestowed upon the child of a celebrity. in 2017, Sylvester Stallone’s three daughters were given the honor, and in 2016, Jamie Foxx’s daughter Corrine Foxx served in the role.