‘Ozempic’s biggest night’: How weight loss drugs showed up at the 2025 Golden Globes

Just eight seconds into the start of the 2025 award show season, Nikki Glaser, the host of the 82nd Golden Globes, dubbed the show “Ozempic’s biggest night.” The comedian wasn’t joking. She’s following the lead of Jimmy Kimmel, who called the weight loss medication “Hollywood’s worst-kept secret” in his monologue at the 2023 Oscars, as GLP-1s were growing in popularity. But now, there’s nothing secret about these drugs and their prevalence inside and outside Los Angeles’s elite. So much so that Lilly, the medication company that manufactures Zepbound, sponsored the CBS broadcast Sunday night.

Here are all of the ways, subtle and not so subtle, that weight loss medications and conversations made their way into the big night.

The red carpet

Kathy Bates’s slimmer figure “turned heads” on the red carpet, according to People. The actress, who was nominated for her work on Matlock, debuted a 100-pound weight loss in September, after years of diet and lifestyle changes, in addition to going on Ozempic to address insulin issues due to type 2 diabetes. Her appearance on the Golden Globes red carpet sparked multiple headlines.

The monologue

Glaser didn’t stop with the weight jokes. She made another diet-related jab when she mentioned “the hardest-working actors” in the room: the servers. “Give it up,” she said to the attendees. “They’ll be bringing you your cocktails to drink and your food — that you’ll look at.”

The commercials

And there were many. During the first commercial break, audiences at home were served WeightWatchers’s latest campaign, promoting the brand’s clinical program, which offers registered dietitians, doctors and GLP-1 prescriptions to members. Olivia Newton-John’s “Physical” was sampled into a jingle with the lyrics “Let’s get clinical.”

Multiple ads for Mounjaro, Ozempic and Lilly’s Zepbound all appeared during subsequent breaks. There was also a commercial for compounded semaglutide by Hers.

The sponsor

While jokes about the Golden Globes being sponsored by these weight loss drug companies had already begun, it wasn’t until the near end of the broadcast that it was announced that Lilly, the company behind Mounjaro and Zepbound, actually sponsored it. The medical manufacturer had sparked conversation around off-brand use, particularly by celebrities, with a commercial that was released just ahead of the 2024 Oscars in March.

"Some people have been using medicine never meant for them for the smaller dress or tux, for a big night, for vanity. But that's not the point,” the ad’s narrator said. "People whose health is affected by obesity are the reason we work on these medications. It matters who gets them."

The fine print on the latest ad reads, “Zepbound is not for cosmetic weight loss.”

The social media debrief

Glaser was right. Ozempic was the frontrunner of online conversations during and after the Golden Globes aired.

Wicked, who? As an X user wrote: “The winner of the Golden Globes tonight was Ozempic,”