No part of Hollywood is ever free of scandal, and no other part faces it quite as much as the Golden Globes. After the severe backlash caused by Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the 2023 Golden Globes, many wondered if the award ceremony would be able to bounce back into a more positive light for 2024. Unfortunately, after many turbulent years in a row, the annual award ceremony did everything except redeem itself in the new year.
The 2023 Golden Globes were hardly the first time the ceremony had seen immense scandal, and the host selected for 2024, American actor and comedian, Jo Koy, faced an uphill battle that he simply could not seem to win.
Koy was announced as the host of the Golden Globes just a few weeks before the ceremony took place, and the lack of time he had to prepare was highly evident in his performance that night.
At the very best, his monologues were difficult to watch and highly cringe-worthy. At worst, they were disrespectful, rude, and degrading to the work of dozens of artists throughout the industry, from Taylor Swift to the creators and actors of Barbie.
It could be argued that Koy’s struggles stemmed from the fact that he was in a completely new and different environment than he was used to, in his usual line of work. Most comedians like Koy memorize a set of jokes, perform the set in a studio recording, and have their work released to a streaming service, such as a Netflix special.
At the Golden Globes, Koy had to read his jokes off a teleprompter, which could have led to some of the clumsiness of his speeches and the overall awkwardness of the night. However, neither this nor the time crunch he experienced in any way excused Koy for the intense disagreeable nature of his jokes or the way he handled the obviously uncomfortable atmosphere.
After making a particularly un-funny joke about the Barbie movie that made it seem like he hadn’t actually watched the movie at all, Koy was greeted with blank stares and only a few awkward chuckles.
In an attempt to salvage his situation, Koy immediately tried to defend himself by blaming the writers of the jokes, saying, “Some I wrote, some other people wrote. I got the gig 10 days ago, do you want a perfect monologue? You’re kidding me, right? Slow down. I wrote some of these, and they’re the ones you’re laughing at.”
In a response days later, Koy commented that he was unimpressed with the reactions of the celebrities in the room and thought they were harsh and unwarranted. He specifically called out Taylor Swift’s so-called “stern” reaction to the joke he told about her.
Overall, Koy’s jokes were far more offensive than they were funny, and he did nothing to own up to his mistakes. Instead, he threw other people under the bus for them.
Between bashing artists and creators across multiple genres and then blaming other people when his jokes weren’t well received, Koy’s appearance at the Golden Globes did more to make the annual ceremony look bad than it did to redeem its reputation, and Koy will certainly never be asked back again.
