Entertainment

Indians Who Got Noticed at Golden Globes 2018

Aziz Ansari, Meher Tatna and Saru Jayaraman made their mark in their own way at the Golden Globe Awards.

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The 75th Golden Globe Awards, held in the backdrop of issues such as harassment of women currently riddling the American film and television industry, also saw Indian American members of the fraternity making their presence felt. While Aziz Ansari won the Golden Globe for the Best Comedy Actor in a TV Series category for Netflix Original show Master of None, Meher Tatna, the president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), chose to wear red when most other women followed the call to dress in black.

HFPA is the non-profit organization that conducts the Golden Globe Awards every year. The awards ceremony, held in California on Jan. 7, was used as a platform by women in the industry to show support for movements such as Time’s Up and #MeToo, started against sexual harassment after the Weinstein controversies. While most actresses, including leading stars such as Meryl Streep, Oprah Winfrey, Nicole Kidman, and Angelina Jolie , wore black to underline their stand on the issue, Tatna chose to wear red.

“I do have my Time’s Up button, so (I’m) standing in solidarity with all these other women,” Tatna, who is Indian and was born in Mumbai, told Entertainment Tonight. “The HFPA is 60 percent women, we’ll have our stories. We are also journalists, so anybody who expresses themselves, especially on this topic, we are in solidarity with,” she added. Tatna said she opted for red in honor of her mother. “My mom and I planned this together a couple of months ago, it is a cultural thing. When you have a celebration, you don’t wear black. So she would be appalled if I were to (have) worn black. And so this is for my mom.”

Her decision became a much talked-about topic of discussion on social media, with people posting differing opinions on the matter.

The decision to wear black was taken by Hollywood actresses and some of them went a step ahead and brought activists with them to the event. Comic actress Amy Poehler came with Indian American attorney and activist Saru Jayaraman. She works towards fair wages for restaurant workers.

Ansari, meanwhile, won his first Golden Globe. The actor, born to a Tamil family in the United States, won the award for the Netflix Original show Master of None, which he has co-written. The show is loosely based on his own life.

“I genuinely didn’t think I was gonna win cause all the websites said I was going to lose,” Ansari, 34, said in his acceptance speech. “That would’ve been s—-y if I had lost two years in a row.”

Ansari’s speech was also mostly beeped out for the use of swear words.

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