Golden Globes host Jimmy Fallon opened the 74th annual awards show with a musical homage to best comedy or musical contender La La Land.
Fallon led a musical number that included singing, dancing and celebrity cameos.
Stuck in a line of limousine traffic on the red carpet, Fallon stepped out to dance alongside stars from TV and film, including Game of Thrones’ Kit Harrington gasping to life and a rapping Millie Bobby Brown from Netflix’s Stranger Things.
The Tonight Show host, emceeing the Golden Globes for the first time, was joined by Justin Timberlake, best song nominee for “Can’t Stop the Feeling” from the animated comedy Trolls; Ryan Reynolds, best actor in a comedy or musical nominee for his turn as the eponymous wisecracking anti-superhero in Deadpool; Amy Adams, best actress in a drama nominee for the sci-fi thriller Arrival; former Globes host Tina Fey; and Nicole Kidman, best supporting actress in a drama nominee for Lion.
Reynolds and Fallon swapped a mint while Fallon tickled the ivories a la Ryan Gosling’s jazz pianist character in La La Land. Next, the host spurned the advances of Fey in lieu of a tuxedo-clad Timberlake. The duo then danced across the cosmos in silhouette before Timberlake did a send-up of Fallon’s signature enthusiastic persona.
Kidman and Fallon have an awkward past, first starting when a friend tried to set the two of them up on a date years ago when both stars were single. They have discussed the event several times on Fallon’s Tonight Show.
La La Land star Emma Stone, nominated for best actress in a musical or comedy for her role, told E!’s Ryan Seacrest during the pre-show about shooting the actual film’s opening number. “They rehearsed it in parking lots and they shot it over two days — it’s three seamless shots. It was insane,” said the actress. “It was a heat wave, it was over 100 degrees and there were so many incredible dancers, there were over 100 dancers.”
Meanwhile, in preparation for the Golden Globes’ opener, Fallon said that “we’ve been working on it, filming different stuff here and there for it for about three months.”
The cold open video was written and directed by Dan Opsal, an Emmy- and WGA-nominated writer for The Tonight Show. Opsal directed Harington’s cameo via Skype. Harington was in England at the time.
La La Land’s choreographer Mandy Moore also mapped out the dance routines for the cold open, while 27 of the 30 dancers in the opening were from the musical as well as the film’s steadicam operator, Ari Robbins.