Sterling K. Brown is a true sports fan.
The actor, 49, walked the red carpet ahead of the 83rd annual Golden Globes on Sunday, Jan 11, but he admitted the ceremony wasn’t exactly his main event of the night. During Entertainment Tonight’s live show, host Nischelle Turner teased that she “had to drag Sterling over here” because he was watching the NFL playoff game between the Philadelphia Eagles and San Francisco 49ers.
“Yeah, it’s 19-17 right now,” he said. “Eagles are up right now with about 17 minutes to go. I’m excited. I’m excited to be here also. I just love football, I’m transparent.” (The 49ers won the game, 23-19.)
“I’m a Chargers fan,” he added when asked what team he’s rooting for. “So the big game comes on tonight during the show and if the camera cuts to me, it’s going to be a weird look because I’m going to be multitasking.”
Turner then pointed out that Dax Shepard has been in the same boat before — at the 2025 Golden Globes, Shepard’s wife Kristen Bell shared a video of him watching the Detroit Lions game on his phone from their seats in the audience while Harrison Ford and Anthony Mackie were onstage presenting an award.
“I’m not the first, I won’t be the last,” Brown quipped, as his wife Ryan Michelle Bathé joked, “I don’t even know who’s playing, child!”
There will be at least one point during the show when Brown will have to take a break from the game, because he is nominated for Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Television Series – Drama for his role in Hulu’s Paradise.
“I’m very excited to be here, happy to be recognized for the show,” he told Turner of the nod. “I’m the only person from the show [here], but it’s like, I’m the only person, I will hold it down for the Paradise crew.”
Brown reunited with This Is Us creator Dan Fogelman for the political thriller, in which he plays Xavier Collins, a secret service agent and single father of two who becomes the leading suspect in the investigation of the shocking murder of President Cal Bradford (James Marsden).
When the show premiered in January 2025, Brown opened up to PEOPLE about stepping into the character.
“People ask, ‘What is it like to do that?’ All of it is fun,” he said. “The funny scenes are fun, the hard scenes are fun. And maybe fun’s not the right word all the time, but it’s the only word that I have at my disposal because I get to do it. I mean, I get to do this thing. People pay me to show up and do this thing, this sort of illumination of the human condition, and it’s fun. And that even when it’s painful, I have in the back of my mind that somebody will see what this character is going through and they will recognize it and they will recognize themselves inside of it and they will feel seen.”
“And I don’t know if fun’s the right word, but I’m still sticking with it because it gives me great joy to help people feel less alone,” he added.
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