The day after an awards show announces its nominations, the focus typically falls on the nominees. However, yesterday’s Golden Globe nominations were a little different, because all anyone can talk about is how badly the actor Marlon Wayans mangled everyone’s name.
If you didn’t see it, it was a masterclass in getting it wrong. Watching Wayans announce the Golden Globe nominations was like living through one of those anxiety dreams where you’re asked to fly a jumbo jet and realise that you don’t know what any of the controls do. If you did see it, then I’m sure your toes will uncurl eventually.
I won’t list every mistake – I wrote them all down and they filled a page – but it was a firework display of ostentatious mispronunciation. In Wayans’s mouth, Ludwig Göransson became “Ludwig G Ronson”. Hannah Einbinder became “Hannah Eye Bender”. Joel Edgerton became “Joel Edd Gerton”. Nouvelle Vague was pronounced to rhyme with “plague”. He accidentally called Sarah Silverman’s comedy special Postmortem “Postpartum”. He had two cracks at Renate Reinsve and got both equally wrong.
Some presenters might be able front their way through something like this, but not Wayans. Every time a foreign-sounding name appeared on the Teleprompter, the fear in his voice was palpable. When he had to read the Korean names behind the KPop Demon Hunters song Golden, he was so nervous that he somehow put a question mark after all of them. He said the name Joachim Trier like he was reading the bottom line of a Snellen chart. He visibly slumped in defeat before even attempting Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas.
Unhelpfully, his co-presenter Skye P Marshall was everything he was not. During her half of the nominations, she was polished and slick, slamming through all her names like they were old friends. No wonder Wayans walked off the stage dabbing his brow.
Now, to the casual observer, this probably just looked like a tough day at the office. But imagine being one of the nominees whose name Wayans mangled. Imagine having your big moment undermined by someone who was supposed to say your name properly, but just ended up making a noise like a house key in a waste disposal unit. It can’t be a great feeling, knowing that you have made it in Hollywood while not quite making it enough for anyone to learn your actual name.
Which isn’t to say that this is an easy job. It isn’t, at all, especially now that awards shows have finally opened themselves up to the glorious possibilities of world cinema. Having to pronounce a long list of unfamiliar names can be daunting. Many of us would struggle with it. And many people before Marlon Wayans have done so.
Most notably, there was Tiffany Haddish. After the success of her role in Girls Trip, it felt for a moment as if she could do it all. And then her hot streak ended, as she crashed, as a co-presenter with Andy Serkis, into the immovable wall of the 2018 Oscar nominations.
She struggled with Scott Neustadter. She messed up Luca Guadagnino so badly that she looked offstage for help. But then she had to say the name Daniel Kaluuya. First she called him “Daniel Koolyé”. Then, after her co-presenter Andy Serkis coached her on the proper pronunciation, she got it wrong again. She called him “Daniel Kahlua”. She called him “Daniel Kallelujah”. “He knows his name,” she muttered at the end, broken and humiliated.
The point is that presenters shouldn’t sound as if they are being ambushed by these names. They shouldn’t swan in unprepared and attempt to coast on their charisma, however great it might be, because that approach clearly doesn’t work. These are names that need to be rehearsed and rehearsed; drilled into them by the award organisers. And it can be done. Skye P Marshall is living proof of that. They should bring her back every year.
There is, of course, an exception. Don’t forget, this is the 10th anniversary of the funniest thing that has ever happened on planet Earth, which is Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences president Cheryl Boone Isaacs mispronouncing the name of lauded cinematographer Dick Pope as “Dick Poop”. Until the day I die, nothing will ever be funnier than Dick Poop. So perhaps that’s the new rule. Presenters should work hard to get the name of every nominee correct, unless they can somehow make them sound like a defecating penis, in which case God bless them.
