Who’s La’Ron Hines? Mississippi native turned TikTok star makes his Golden Globes debut

TikTok star La’Ron Hines brought his popular “Are You Smarter than a Preschooler?” segment to the national stage Sunday as he quizzed a group of youngsters on their knowledge — or lack thereof — of the 2021 Golden Globe Awards.

Hines, known for his viral videos featuring students who attend his parents’ learning center in Brookhaven, Mississippi, put a Hollywood spin on the segment by asking the kids about this year’s nominees, who they knew very little about.

“Who is Lin Manuel-Miranda,” he asked one youngster.

“Captain America!” the boy responded.

Hines also posed a question to his 4-year-old godsister Ja’Bria, a regular in his TikTok videos, about the hit Netflix original series “Ozark,” which was nominated for Best Television Series — Drama.

“Ozart [sic] is the cookie monster to the cookie jar,” Ja’Bria replied.

When asked how movies are made, one boy responded, “with bricks!”

Hines’ mother Katrina Hines, founder and owner of the Kids R Us Learning Center, said the the awards show debut was an “exciting opportunity” for both La’Ron and her young students.

“This was a super exciting moment for him,” Katrina Hines told McClatchy News. “It’s something he’s been doing on TikTok since the pandemic started ... so it was an exciting opportunity for him to be able to show the work that he’s been doing on national TV with the kids.”

She said Golden Globe producers contacted La’Ron in January at the behest of show hosts Tiny Fey and Amy Poehler, who are “really big fans” of his TikTok videos.

The crew “flew down [to Mississippi] and did all of the production at the learning center,” Katrina Hines said. “They just did everything right there.”

In addition to making it to national television, La’Ron Hines, 19, now has a producer credit under his belt after helping Fey and Poehler edit the comedic segment for Sunday night’s show, which pulled in about 5.4 million viewers, Deadline reported.

Many heralded La’Ron and his preschoolers as “the real stars of the Golden Globes” in a heartwarming segment intended to pay tribute to late actor Chadwick Boseman. The kids got virtually every question about the awards show wrong, with the exception of a question about the “Black Panther” actor, who died from colon cancer in August 2020.

Each of them answered correctly and confidently when Hines asked, “Who is Chadwick Boseman?”

One of the kids recalled Boseman, 46, as “the good guy” in Marvel’s 2018 blockbuster film.

Boseman took home a posthumous award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture for his final role as Levee Green in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” in which he starred alongside acting greats Viola Davis and Glynn Turman. His wife, Taylor Simone Ledward, accepted the honor on Boseman’s behalf in an emotional speech.

“He would say something beautiful, something inspiring, something that would amplify that little voice inside of all of us that tells you you can,” Ledward said through tears.