It wasn’t easy find host for 81St Golden Globes this year, the first iteration of the awards show run by Dick Clark Productions, which was taken over by the scandal-plagued Hollywood Foreign Press Association. (Full disclosure: Rolling rockIts parent company, PMC, owns Dick Clark Productions.)
Many high-profile comedians turned down the gig, perhaps due to a lack of preparation time given its proximity to the end of the actors’ strike and the HFPA’s past, including former Oscar host Chris Rock, Ali Wong and the trio. by Will Arnett, Jason Bateman and Sean Hayes, who co-host the “SmartLess” podcast. On Dec. 21, stand-up comic Jo Koy was announced as a last-minute host — just two weeks before the Jan. 7 ceremony, which first aired on CBS. And the rush job showed during Koy’s monologue.
“The moment I signed the contract…I locked myself in a room and started watching everything. While my family clinks champagne glasses and rings in the New Year, my family watches OppenheimerKoy said. “I loved Oppenheimer. I have only one complaint: [It] it needed another hour, because I felt it needed a little more background. My New Year’s resolution for 2024 is to finish Oppenheimer in 2025. I love Oppenheimer — especially in the first season.” As the camera panned to a nonchalant Christopher Nolan, Koy added: “It’s so stupid…”
Things only got worse from there when he moved on to Barbenheimer’s other half.
“Oppenheimer and Barbie they are competing for the film box office hit,” Koy said. “Oppenheimer is based on a 724-page Pulitzer Prize-winning book about the Manhattan Project, and Barbie is based on a plastic doll with big bobbleheads” — which drew laughs and some boos from the crowd.
Koy continued: “The timing is key Barbie it’s when she goes from perfect beauty to bad breath, cellulite and flat feet — or what casting directors call a “character actor.”
When that joke drew groans and a few laughs, Koy blamed his jokes.
“Some I wrote, some others wrote,” he explained, adding, “Yeah, I got the gig ten days ago! Want a perfect monologue? Shut up! You’re kidding me, right? I wrote some of them, and they’re the ones you laugh at.”
There were some really funny jokes buried in Koy’s monologue, including a fun jab at 80-year-old Robert De Niro about how exactly he got his partner pregnant at such an old age, but Koy had already lost the crowd.
It’s hard to blame the guy, though, given that not only was it his first time hosting an awards show, but he had very little time to agree.
