Golden Globes Host Nikki Glaser Called Out the ‘Deadbeat Dads’ of Awards Season
The Golden Globes are on Sunday, January 11, and host Nikki Glaser has some serious thoughts about this awards show season’s crop of movies — it’s good to be a “deadbeat dad.”
The 41-year-old comedian noticed a trend when it came to three movies that are in the running for top awards this year: Jay Kelly, Marty Supreme, and Sentimental Value. In an interview with Glamour, Glaser quipped, “It’s amazing to be a deadbeat dad. Be a dad, but just leave, and you can have this amazing career.”
While Glaser was quick to joke about the situation, she made a valid point about how seemingly easy it is for dads to prioritize their career over their family, especially when it came to George Clooney’s film, Jay Kelly.
Despite his character’s “fraught relationship with his children, and regret over how he handled his career and his family,” he seemed OK about “wanting to do it again” the same way.
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Glaser noted, “And I’m like, ‘Wait, so it all worked out?’ I really think there’s something funny about that. I haven’t found a way to synthesize that into a really punchy joke, but I thought that was interesting that I left the movies this year being like, I don’t want to be a mom, but I would love to be a dad.”
It might be a highlight to look out for on Sunday, because Glaser isn’t wrong about dads often getting a pass for pursuing their careers and hobbies while moms carry the emotional labor at home. “I thought this whole thing was about regretting all the things he did, but then he watched a montage of all the movies he was in, and he was like, ‘No, it was all worth it,'” she added.
Fans might be happy to know that in real life, Clooney doesn’t related to Jay Kelly at all as a family man. He’s happily married to human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, and they share eight-year-old twins, Alexander and Ella.
“Fame, [Jay] actually does really well. And I’m kind of the opposite of that in a way,” he told CBS News in November 2025. “I feel I’m a better parent, I hope, certainly husband. And fame, if there was one of the two, that would be the one I’m least comfortable with.”
And if we are weighing out the importance of George and Amal’s careers, the 64-year-old actor knows his wife wins hands down — and he’s known it for over a decade.
“I was shooting [a movie] in New York … strapped to a bomb vest, and I come home,” George told ABC News in May 2015. “My wife has just come back from Strasbourg, where she was in the middle of a trial over the Armenian genocide with the International Court of Appeals, and asks me about my day, and I say, ‘Yeah, I had a fake bomb strapped on me,’ and everything she does has actual consequence.”
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