Why Michelle Williams Wasn’t at Golden Globes 2026 to Accept Her Award
In her career of over three decades, acclaimed actor Michelle Williams has garnered dozens of accolades. Thus far, the star of “Brokeback Mountain,” “Blue Valentine,” “My Week with Marilyn,” and “The Fabelmans” has earned eight Golden Globe nominations and won three of them. The most recent of these wins came this year for her turn in a biopic tale of living well in the face of mortality. Alas, she was not able to attend this particular ceremony, owing, most likely, to none other than her latest professional obligations.
The Win and the Acceptance
This past January 11, the Golden Globe Awards chose Williams as its winner for the category of Best Female Actor in a Limited Series, Anthology Series, or Motion Picture Made for Television. In this case, the series in question was “Dying for Sex,” an FX miniseries released on April 4 of last year and based (rather liberally) on the autobiographical work of Molly Kochan (1973-2019).
Kochan was a podcaster and author who left her husband and became very sexually active following her 2015 diagnosis of terminal cancer. She chronicled her experiences on her podcast, also called “Dying for Sex” (which she co-hosted with her good friend Nikki Boyer), and in a memoir titled “Screw Cancer: Becoming Whole” (both posthumously published); it is primarily from these sources that the series is adapted.
At the moment, Williams is starring in a production of “Anna Christie,” a Pulitzer-Prize-winning play that was originally written by Eugene O’Neal and debuted in 1921. And this is far from her only commitment: she’s also starring in a forthcoming Peggy Lee biopic, “Fever,” as well as yet another biographical drama, “Evel Knievel on Tour.” With such a full schedule, it’s hardly a mystery why she was not able to attend her eighth Golden Globes award ceremony.
In her absence, Melissa McCarthy and Kathryn Hahn accepted the accolade on her behalf. The Golden Globes posted on YouTube an eight-second clip of this acceptance, wherein McCarthy succinctly, crisply explained that “Michelle Williams could not be here this evening.” Hahn slipped in the joke “I’m Michelle Williams” before the two of them exited the stage.
A Deeply Felt Performance, An Ever-Working Performer
Now, we can only imagine what kind of acceptance speech Williams would have delivered if she had accepted the award in person. However, if some of her existing statements on “Dying for Sex” are any indication, it might have been a very powerful address.
In August of last year, during an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Williams described how deeply emotionally affecting it was to listen to Kochan’s actual podcast in preparation for her role. “It’s the thing that just absolutely gut-punched me,” she recalled, “I couldn’t stop crying, the way that she chose to take her last breaths and what was on her mind, what was on her heart… I don’t mean to cry, but how she went out was, she lived, and it got me bad.”
Williams also said that it was “so special that FX has given us this opportunity” in part because “Dying for Sex” had more women behind and in front of the camera than the great majority of television projects. It was, she explained, “a remarkable opportunity… to make a show about women, written by women, directed by women, starring women, with so many women and so many women on the crew about a horny dying woman and her best friend. That doesn’t feel like an opportunity that comes along very often.”
It may be a shame that Williams wasn’t able to be present on the night that she received this high honor for her work on such a unique project. But, by all accounts, she likely made a productive day out of her absence. And, if her track record is any indication, there’s a strong chance that one of the projects currently on her plate may become the vehicle for a ninth GG nomination.
