Sixth in a series of interviews with the people who make the Golden Globes happen. 

For the second consecutive year, Ricky Kirshner and Glenn Weiss will be executive producers-show runners of the Golden Globes, with Weiss also directing. Their track record is astounding, including the Tony Awards, Emmys, Kennedy Center Honors, Oscars, Super Bowl Halftime, Thanksgiving Day Parade, political conventions, and various other specials. 

You’ve done virtually every awards show, but does the Golden Globes present a unique challenge? 

Weiss: The biggest challenge is the earliness of the show in the season. We always have a preproduction period of X number of weeks, but with the Globes there are two major holidays, so the biggest surprise is how critical that time is that we lose, because so many people are closed down and away in that period. But we’re proud of what we did last year, we think we’re taking major leaps forward this year. We’re coalescing as a team, which is great. 

Kirshner: There are a lot of awards, and we just last year added two awards, so there is a lot of content and a lot of categories, so we don’t have much time to play with. 

Weiss: We celebrate both movies and TV, so there is a lot of content, a lot of categories. There will be a lot of deserving people in the room and we want to give them their due. So we want to leave time for the people being honored. 

Anything you’re especially looking forward to? 

Weiss: I’ll start with Nikki Glaser, and I’m not just saying that. That’s from having worked with her over the last few months, I like the energy and ideas she’s bringing. 

Kirshner: This show has 27 categories that people know, so Nikki is kind of the X factor, and she’s been great. I’m looking forward to that part of the show. 

Weiss: I’m so thrilled with the amount of preparation she’s done. She’s testing material in comedy clubs; we’ve seen audience responses and that’s a really good gauge. She’s a really great talent and I can’t wait to see the audience respond to her because she has some great material. 

Last year’s show was a huge success, but did you two decide more of this, less of this, for next year? 

Weiss: If I ever do a ‘perfect’ show, it’s time to get out of the game. There are always things you want to do differently, raise the bar, but we certainly learned a lot and this year’s show will benefit from all we learned last year and will get even better. 

The Hilton Hotel construction affects almost everything this year; does it affect you? 

Kirshner: The entire backstage is gone; there’s no support space back there. Our production team had to build a double-decker temporary structure,  to hold some part of what would normally be the backstage. That’s been the biggest effect on our show, in terms of talent holding and office space and other stuff that’s normally back there. It’s all gone. 

Weiss: Nothing is “normal” as it was. The construction affects every little detail, whether it’s limos arriving or red carpet, we don’t have a direct-to-backstage access that we had before, and these little things keep us on our toes and makes us pay attention even more. That ensures that we’re all paying close attention and nobody’s phoning it in. The Hilton ballroom is such a different room from other shows. When someone wins an award, what they have to do to get to the stage — when you tune in, we want to give you an idea of where people are seated in relation to each other, so you understand the path to the stage. We have several concepts that I think will be fun for the home viewers to see. There are definitely elements in the room that will be noticed by the TV audience. All was building on a base — we didn’t deconstruct, we’re continuing to polish.