Lily Gladstone likens Golden Globes to 'Squid Game' on The Kelly Clarkson Show

Lily Gladstone, the star of Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, compared awards ceremonies to the Netflix drama Squid Game during her appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show. Gladstone voiced her skepticism about the awards circuit, saying, “The Globes was a little bit like Squid Game. I mean, the reality is, you’re in shapewear, you need to pee, you have commercial breaks but that’s the only time that you’re able to do it.”

Gladstone, who won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Drama in January, became the first Indigenous woman to receive this honor. She delivered much of her acceptance speech in the Blackfoot language, expressing her gratitude for being able to speak even a little of her language on such a platform. “In this business, Native actors used to speak their lines in English and then the sound mixers would run them backwards to accomplish Native languages on camera,” she noted.

Highlighting the significance of her win, Gladstone added, “This is for every little res kid, every little urban kid, every little Native kid out there who has a dream who is seeing themselves represented, and our stories told by ourselves, in our own words with tremendous allies and tremendous trust with and from each other.”

Despite her win at the Golden Globes, Gladstone lost the Best Actress Oscar to Emma Stone for her role in Poor Things. She joins a list of frequently nominated celebrities, including Joaquin Phoenix, John Gielgud, Woody Allen, Anthony Hopkins, and Katharine Hepburn, who have expressed skepticism about the awards circuit. The late Glenda Jackson described such prize-giving as “a whole shebang of nonsense” and criticized the transformation of the Oscars into an event more about fashion than cinema.

In a 2016 interview, Jackson remarked, “The Oscars have been transformed into what they are now. They have much less to do with cinema. They are about frocks and the whole shebang of nonsense.” She also noted the increased media coverage of awards shows, saying, “Nowadays, it seems like the real competition is between the different award shows.”