Daniel Kaluuya Reflects on ‘Judas’ Lessons as Golden Globes Press Room Starts Rough
We knew the 2021 Golden Globes would be a night like no other — and that includes the time-honored tradition of the winners press conference.
Usually situated in the cushy back ballrooms of the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles, where dressed up journalists toss back free diet coke and pasta salad while mingling with publicists and talent, the coronavirus pandemic forced the event to Zoom.
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Journalists from around the globe brought their best virtual backgrounds for the night’s first big winner Daniel Kaluuya, who took best supporting actor in a motion picture for “Judas and the Black Messiah.”
The press conference setting in the winners room at the Globes is far more unpredictable than the event’s hurried and polite red carpet, and usually allows for spontaneity. This year, the Hollywood Foreign Press asked journalists to submit questions for consideration ahead of each winner appearance.
Kaluuya, whose on-air acceptance speech was plagued with technical difficulties, certainly made up for lost time by fielding nearly ten questions in the press room (an unheard of amount of time in years past).
“Tip your hat to Ryan Coogler. When he made a billion, he pitched this,” said Kaluuya of his “Judas” producer and the director of Marvel’s “Black Panther.” The Warner Bros. film tells of Fred Hampton, the chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party in late 1960s, who was betrayed by an undercover FBI informant named William O’Neal.
The actor said he’ll take lessons from playing Hampton into his own life and career.
“The importance of clarity of thought and clarity of belief and how to think of an idea and action it. Organizing people together, loving the local community and focusing on the local community first,” Kaluuya said of what inspired him most about Hampton.
The actor also noted that the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor served as a needle-mover for the resonance of the project, adding that “a lot of people tried to make this film. The fact that mainstream audiences are arriving to this story is everything.”
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