First Twins. Now Quintuplets? Cynthia Erivo's 'Poker Face' Turn(s)
The 'Wicked' diva follows similar acts by Pattinson, De Niro, Michael B. & Pugh. Plus: the Globes' pod nod, and an Ankler shoutout on 'The Studio'
Pre-emptive congrats to Conan O’Brien, or maybe Dax Shepard, or possibly the guys behind Smartless: a new Golden Globes category has been created just for you!
That’s not exactly what the Golden Globes organization said in its Wednesday announcement that the 2026 Globes will add an award for best podcast. Not to be outdone by the Oscars and next year’s first-ever Academy Award for casting, the Globes have expanded with a category that speaks to what they care about the most: celebrities willing to come to their show.
Yes, there are plenty of excellent podcasts that aren’t hosted by stars, from the critically acclaimed public radio shows that are still kicking to one that I sure hope you’re already subscribed to! But it doesn’t take much cynicism about the Globes, or the enterprise of awards shows in general, to assume that the Terry Grosses and Anna Sales of the world won’t stand much of a chance against the pod gods who bring their famous friends into the recording studio each week.
Here’s my predicted lineup for the first-ever best podcast category at the Golden Globes:
Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend (host: O’Brien)
Armchair Expert (host: Shepard)
Smartless (hosts: Jason Bateman, Will Arnett and Sean Hayes)
Good Hang (host: Amy Poehler, iconic former Golden Globes host)
The Nikki Glaser Podcast (host: Nikki Glaser, who is also hosting next year’s Globes)
WTF with Marc Maron (host: Marc Maron, the least famous but still more likely to be nominated than an NPR figure)
You could swap in a few other celebrity-hosted podcasts, or maybe court Hollywood controversy by including the likes of Joe Rogan, but you get the idea: The podcast landscape is a star-dense environment, and it would be highly un-Globes-like to invent this whole category without trying to include as many of them as possible.
I promise I’m not just being a bitter podcaster who is (probably!) never going to be nominated for this award: I genuinely like the idea! Podcasts are a huge part of our media ecosystem — particularly for shaping the way we think about celebrities. As I wrote about the podcast-focused Signal Awards last fall, it is always a little bit of relief when a new medium gravitates toward the very old-fashioned format of an awards show. No matter how much Maron has revolutionized the chat show with the podcast he makes in his garage, he presumably would like an award just as much as the cast of Only Murders in the Building would.
Globe-al Positioning
The real question to me is why the Globes opted for a podcast award instead of something for the even newer, even more influential format disrupting Hollywood: creators. As my colleague Natalie Jarvey told me on the podcast not long ago, digital creators want awards too, even the ones who have built their own empires entirely independent of Hollywood. Though some creators are campaigning for Emmys this year, the short-form Emmy categories don’t really offer a spotlight commensurate with the impact they have on culture. The Golden Globes, for all the silliness and conflicts of interest, would offer plenty of shine.
The Globes org didn’t explain why it picked this week of all weeks to announce the new category, but it truly wouldn’t surprise me if they were riding the coattails of The Studio, which just debuted its eighth episode, “The Golden Globes” (and whose second-season renewal was announced by Apple TV+ on Monday). It’s a typically funny, high-anxiety installment, following Seth Rogen’s studio head, Matt Remick, through a night at the awards show on behalf of a Zoë Kravitz-directed film that (spoiler!) wins the Globe for best musical or comedy. The real winner of the fictional night, though? Well, just ask The Ankler:
No, I was not consulted on whether I really would have called Ike Barinholtz’s Sal Saperstein “the MVP of the evening,” but given the genuinely funny running joke about him throughout the episode, I’m on board with it. My one bone to pick, which I brought up to series cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra in an interview last week, is that The Studio’s version of the Golden Globes is infinitely more beautiful than the real version, which is wildly overlit for the sake of broadcast cameras.
Newport-Berra’s explanation, which you can read in this very newsletter in a few weeks, is that Rogen and co-creator Evan Goldberg wanted to depict Hollywood as more glamorous and magical than the real thing. If the next awards show I attend wants to take some cues from the lighting scheme of this episode, I won’t complain.
Multiple Personalities
Today brings the three-episode season premiere of Poker Face, the Peacock whodunit starring Natasha Lyonne and a truly astonishing constellation of guest stars. I’ve seen only those three debut installments, but it’s hard to imagine any of the upcoming stars outdoing what Cynthia Erivo accomplishes in the premiere episode, titled — wordplay incoming— “The Game Is a Foot.”
Yes, it’s very hip right now for actors to play twins. There were two Robert Pattinsons struggling to survive in Mickey 17, two Robert De Niros being seen by the miniscule audiences for Alto Knights, two very memorable Michael B. Jordans in Sinners, and even a brief sequence in Thunderbolts* where Florence Pugh fights a mirror version of herself. Technology has made it much easier to pull off these magic tricks than in the Parent Trap days (even the 1998 remake), and what actor can resist the appeal of teaming up with the greatest scene partner of all: themselves?
What Erivo pulls off on Poker Face is many orders of magnitude more complex, and not just because she’s playing quintuplets, most of them child actor veterans of a goofy fake ’90s drama called Kid Cop Nights. The heightened world of Poker Face makes room for Erivo to play five very different, kooky characters, from a snobby artist living off the grid to a Valley Girl DJ decked out in leopard print. In the scenes with multiple Erivos facing off against one another, you never for a second doubt which character you’re watching.
It comes as no surprise that Erivo has incredible control over her voice, or that she’s capable of such nimble transformation. But after the blunt sincerity of Wicked and the press tour surrounding it, I had come to underestimate her comic abilities and the sheer screen presence she can bring even without a ballad to sing. For Erivo to fit in this Poker Face stint amid her seemingly endless Wicked commitments cannot have been easy, but the quirky series is an equally satisfying showcase for her remarkable talents.
It’s hard to speculate how Erivo will fit into the Emmy race for guest actress in a comedy series, since we won’t know until June just how many other people qualify in the category. She’ll likely be up against Sarah Polley and Kravitz — both playing versions of themselves on The Studio — as well as the usual glut of Saturday Night Live hosts (including her Wicked co-star Ariana Grande!).
While it’s hard to pick a favorite, I’ll certainly be rooting for Erivo to get the recognition she deserves.
Closing Credits
The ’90s-style voiceover and font of this new Materialists trailer has me fully sold. And if Pedro Pascal can pull off an explosive episode of prestige television, an old-school rom-com and a superhero film in a single summer, there truly may be no stopping him.
Sinners is still inspiring some fascinating film writing, and is a rich enough text to handle it. I enjoyed this deep dive on the film’s use of Irish, folk and blues music, and the interplay among them. (Director Ryan Coogler and composer Ludwig Göransson also break down the use of the blues in particular in this video.)