Critical Darlings: Hamnet And The History Of Oscar Villains with David Sims

Blank Check with Griffin & David

Blank Check Productions / Talkhouse

Tv & Film, Film Reviews, Society & Culture, Comedy

4.7 • 6.6K Ratings

🗓️ 15 January 2026

⏱️ 79 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, we’re joined by David Sims as we orbit the Golden Globes and their Best Drama winner, Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet. In the vibes-based reality of awards season predictions, Hamnet has emerged as a potential spoiler to the season’s other favorites, including Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another and Ryan Coogler’s Sinners. But what, exactly, makes something an Oscar villain? We also get into the film itself, the historical Shakespeare, why people are weird about Chloé Zhao, and our predictions for next week's Oscar nominations. Subscribe to Richard's newsletter, Premiere Party, and read Alison's work at Vulture. Sign up for Check Book, the Blank Check newsletter featuring even more “real nerdy shit” to feed your pop culture obsession. Dossier excerpts, film biz AND burger reports, and even more exclusive content you won’t want to miss out on. Join our Patreon for franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter, Instagram, Threads and Facebook! Buy some real nerdy merch Connect with other Blankies on our Reddit or Discord For anything else, check out BlankCheckPod.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Critical Darling's, a conversation about the award season conversation.
0:13.0	One contender at a time.
0:17.0	Please welcome to this stage, your hosts, Richard Lawson and Alison Wilmore.
0:26.2	Thank you, Marie.
0:27.3	Thank you.
0:28.9	Did you guys watch the Golden Globes on Sunday?
0:31.0	I assume we all did, right?
0:32.1	I sure did.
0:32.8	Yeah.
0:33.7	Yeah.
0:33.8	I thought they did pretty, they were pretty good.
0:36.2	I don't know.
0:36.7	Like Nikki Glazer's fun, right?
0:38.2	I do really like her.
0:39.2	Yeah, I feel like they need her so desperately to like preserve whatever energy is left from those awards.
0:45.0	They need to get rid of the TV awards.
0:47.2	They need to get rid of the TV award.
0:49.1	This is exactly my take.
0:50.9	You're watching Emmy speeches from four months ago.
0:54.6	Yeah.
0:54.8	Noel Wiley bless his sweetheart is like, I'm so humbled. I'm like, no, you're not. Not anymore. You got humbled. Like, I buy you being humbled the first time, like when you won the Emmy. Yeah. I like, watching all the adolescents people go up on stage and like, all right, what do I say? I swear. This is my eighth speech for this.
1:10.8	I was saying this to my wife.
	...

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