Hollywood blissfully partied on last night for the 2011 Golden Globes despite the hovering black cloud of scandal, FCC questions, lawsuits, and questions about whether NBC wants to be burdened with these weird situations.
In brief: the ex publicist for the Globes sued them this week for $2 million and alleged all kinds of payola and fraud. While the publicist probably doesn’t have much of a case, the Hollywood Foreign Press is now imperiled by years of secrets springing forth. It won’t be pretty, as my readers have known for years.
Meantime, Saturday brought the annual BAFTA/LA tea party, a great afternoon at the Four Seasons Hotel sponsored by Bombay Sapphire–and a lot of it was going around while stars like Nicole Kidman, Michelle Williams, Colin Firth and Helena Bonham Carter, Guy Pearce, Barbara Hershey, Brenda Vaccaro, Jeff Bridges, Ben Affleck, Jackie Bisset, Jeremy Renner, Melissa Leo, composer Alexandre Desplat, Andrew Garfield, and so on.
Of course, in that group, Nicole Kidman got the most attention. She’s headed to an Oscar nomination for  “Rabbit Hole,” a tremendous performance and maybe her best work in years (which is saying something). Kidman produced the movie after she optioned the Broadway play, and made the project come together. She was on her own yesterday, leaving husband Keith Urban home with toddler daughter Sunday Rose.
Some of the guests wound up coming late–Newsweek magazine (still in business, who knew?) convinced a bunch of nominees–Firth, James Franco, Kidman etc–to sit for a roundtable discussion that they also filmed–I don’t know if it’s for the Newsweek website, the Daily Beast, or Harman Kardon.
“Those roundtables are like group therapy,” Nicole said with a laugh.
And BAFTA? Very high on “The King’s Speech,” of course.
