Rob Lowe accidentally sent a congratulatory text meant for Golden Globe winner Robert Downey Jr to Bradley Cooper, who lost the award in a different category.
Both Downey Jr and Cooper were nominated at the 2024 Golden Globes for their roles in Oppenheimer and Maestro, respectively. While the former went on to win Best Performance by a Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture Drama, the latter lost in the Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Motion Picture Drama category to Downey Jr’s co-star Cillian Murphy.
During a recent appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Lowe, 59, recounted Downey Jr’s “amazing acceptance speech”.
“And I’m so excited for him, so I text him, ‘So glad you won. That is the most beautiful acceptance speech I’ve heard in a long time. Boy, do you deserve it,’” the Parks and Recreation alum said. “I hit [send] and I realise, ‘Oh s***. I just sent that to Bradley Cooper.’”
Lowe remembered quickly texting Cooper: “‘No, no, I meant that for Robert Downey Jr.’
“Now that’s even worse! I made the guy feel worse! It was terrible,” he laughed.
When asked by host Jimmy Kimmel if he made things up by correctly texting Downey Jr, Lowe revealed that he tried but instead made the same mistake again, sending another wrong text to Cooper.
The 9-1-1: Lone Star actor said that Cooper was a good sport about the mishap, texting back: “No, no, no. It’s fine, I like living vicariously through these mistakes.”
The 81st Golden Globes kicked off award season on 7 January, honouring the best in film and television from 2023. Greta Gerwig’s box office smash, Barbie, initially led the nominations with nine nods; however, Christopher Nolan’s war drama Oppenheimer walked away as the big winner of the evening.
Meanwhile, HBO’s award-winning series Succession and Hulu’s comedy-drama The Bear swept the TV categories.
This year’s ceremony was hosted by relatively unknown comedian Jo Koy, whose presenting job was largely panned by audiences and critics.
His monologue included jokes about Barry Keoghan’s penis in Saltburn and the runtime of Oppenheimer, which was actually booed. Taylor Swift did not look amused when he turned his jokes on her – with the camera catching her stoney-faced response.
Koy has since been defended by a Gerwig, who argued that the emcee’s “sexist” joke about Barbie being a film adaptation of “a plastic doll with big boobs” was “not wrong”.
“Well, you know, he’s not wrong,” she told the Radio 4’s Today programme. “She’s the first doll that was mass-produced with breasts so he was right on.”