Jo Koy on Having the “Courage” to Host Historic Golden Globes and His “Rookie Move” With Writers Comment
Jo Koy says he’s giving himself an A-plus for hosting the Golden Globes just days after the historic gig received backlash.
The comedian and actor spoke to the Los Angeles Times just days after the tumultuous experience, which saw Koy announced as the event’s host just 10 days before the ceremony. In the interview, which also touched on his upcoming tour and how he crafts his specials, Koy graded his performance and answered why he’d take a gig where his writers didn’t get into a room together until two days before the event.
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“I don’t want to give myself a rating because that’s subjective, you can give me whatever rating you want,” he said. “I’m gonna give myself an A-plus just based on the courage [to do it]. I’m going to hit it over the head a million times, whoever you can think of in your head that could have done it, I’m telling you right now they said no, and I didn’t.”
The reason he didn’t, he said, was due to its historic nature. “The history of the show is 81 years. That’s 81 hosts and some repeated. I’m the first Asian to ever solo host. It’s 2024. I’m the first out of 81 years. Sandra Oh was the first co-host, but I was the first solo host,” he said. “Imagine if someone said yes before me, we’d still be at the 82nd Golden Globes and still no Asian as a solo host, so if I didn’t say yes, there still would never have been.”
While Koy said he’s “happy I did it because I did accept that challenge,” the fact that they were “writing up until they said we’re live” and doing “absolute cold reads” without a chance to work anything out, raised some questions for him.
“This is not an excuse, I’m just trying to paint the picture because I don’t think people understand, in any situation, how is that geared towards winning?” he told the L.A. Times.
During the interview, he also addressed a comment perceived as a slight to his writing team after his monologue failed to earn rousing support from the Golden Globes room. “I wrote some of these [jokes], and they’re the ones you’re laughing at!” he said at the time. Now, Koy is calling that a “rookie move.”
“I love my writers. I love all three of them, and I shouted them out. And I told them like that was a moment right there where I’m just grasping. I love them, and I can’t stop talking about them in every interview. They busted their ass, man,” he said. “There’s a lot of greats that make rookie moves. That was a rookie move. Those writers are dope, and that was not my intention at all. They were amazing, they had my back, and I need to make sure I fix that, and I will, I always will.”
The Easter Sunday star once again addressed critics of his Barbie and Taylor Swift jokes, with Koy stating he “didn’t understand the Taylor tiff” and that those angry over his Barbie “boobies” material had left him wondering “what happened to society where we can’t even joke with each other anymore.”
“I did that [Swift] joke, and I’m like, what just happened?” he reflected. “Mind you, that one was just getting rewritten 50 million times, never ran it through, all the way up until we had to walk out. It’s just weird, where do you place it, and we kept hammering it and cutting it down. But the whole intention of that joke was to make fun of the NFL.”
“Then, just the reaction to the Barbie joke. The things that are being said, it’s just like, man, I don’t think you understand who I am as a person, you know what I mean?” he added.
Koy is continuing to speak out about his performance, with Hollywood names — including fellow comedians, actors and writers like Whoopi Goldberg and Steve Martin — defending him after he faced a wave of criticism on social about his Swift and Barbie jokes, writers comments and more.
On Wednesday, Barbie director Greta Gerwig responded directly, sharing that his joke about Oppenheimer being based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning book while Barbie is about “a plastic doll with big boobies” wasn’t entirely wrong.
“Well, he’s not wrong. She’s the first doll that was mass-produced with breasts, so he was right on,” she said. “And you know, I think that so much of the project of the movie was unlikely because it is about a plastic doll.”
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