Just weeks ago, the 2024 Golden Globes announced that Jo Koy would host the 81st annual ceremony. That didn’t give Koy much time to prepare his monologue—and perhaps that abbreviated timeline is to blame for the seemingly tepid response Koy drew at the ceremony Sunday night. “I got the gig 10 days ago! You want a perfect monologue? Yo, shut up,” he said at one relatively quiet point in his monologue. “You’re kidding me, right? Slow down. I wrote some of these, and they’re the ones you’re laughing at.”
As Vanity Fair’s David Canfield reported from the ballroom: “If you’re wondering if that played as bad in the room as it (probably) did on TV, the answer is yes. I mostly saw eyes darting around tables in confusion, wondering if they were supposed to be laughing.”
Koy opened his set by saying that he had a difficult time completing Oppenheimer. “I just got one complaint: needed another hour,” he quipped, as the camera panned to a less-than-enthused Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr. “I just felt like it needed some more backstory. My New Year’s resolution for 2024 is to finish Oppenheimer in 2025.” He couldn’t resist making one more crack at the movie, adding before a crowd of A-listers at the Beverly Hilton on Sunday night that Christopher Nolan’s film “answered a lifelong question that’s been on my mind for years: Yes, scientists do get laid—as long as they look like Cillian Murphy.”
Koy then turned his attention to a few other 2024 Golden Globe nominees, including Killers of the Flower Moon, “The one thing I learned about that movie is that white people stole everything,” he said. “You know what I loved about Saltburn? I learned that satanic families have feelings too.” He then singled out star Barry Keoghan, asking, “Where’s your penis seated? That’s the real star of the show.”
Things continued to stall after the first few awards were handed out, particularly when he turned his attention to one of the evening’s starriest attendees.“The big difference between the Golden Globes and the NFL? On the Golden Globes, we have fewer camera shots of Taylor Swift,” Koy said, as an unamused Swift sipped her drink.
Koy, who is best known for his four Netflix comedy specials and frequent appearances on Chelsea Lately, did not acknowledge the Globes’ turbulent past few years, which included voting body reform and an exodus from the show’s longtime home at NBC for CBS (as it concurrently streams on Paramount+). Though his jokes were not warmly received, Koy struck a far less prickly tone than previous hosts like Ricky Gervais, the duo of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, and last year’s emcee, Jerrod Carmichael, who pulled no punches in confronting the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s various controversies during his scathing opening. Instead, Koy joked about Ozempic and warned billionaires to learn this lesson from Succession: “Pull out. They’re gonna be a bad version of you; just pull out.”
“I am the first solo Asian to do this,” Koy told Vanity Fair days before taking the stage. “I know what this means to a lot of people, especially the younger kids that are indirectly being inspired by this. So I’ve got to come through for them. And that’s what moving forward is all about, you know what I mean? We learn from our mistakes. The Golden Globes, it’s moving forward too. It’s made its shared mistakes and now, we’re moving forward, and in the right direction.”
In the lead-up to the 2024 Golden Globes, Koy sought advice from a few fellow comedians, including some that, according to CNN, declined the hosting gig, such as Chris Rock, who is nominated in one of two new categories, best performance in a stand-up special, and Ali Wong, recognized for her performance in Netflix’s Beef. Koy said he took Wong’s advice to “be prepared” seriously, remaining “hyperfocused” on watching every nominated movie and show—at least one part of the assignment that he seemingly understood.
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