Comedian Jo Koy has earned a great amount of criticism for his Golden Globes monologue that took place January 7th, 2024. Koy poorly prepared his opening monologue, which angered and offended the media.
“The big difference between the Golden Globes and the NFL? On the Golden Globes, we have fewer camera shots of Taylor Swift”, said Koy. Taylor Swift responds to Koy’s low joke by taking a sip of her drink, clearly unamused.
Later in his monologue, Koy states, “Oppenheimer is based on a 721 page Pulitzer prize winning book about a Manhattan project. And Barbie is on a plastic doll with big b**bies!”, earning awkward reactions and visible grimaces from the audience. The film Barbie was created to depict the hardships women have to face from men in today’s society, which obviously went right over Koy’s head. He proceeds to say, “The key moment in Barbie is when she goes from perfect beauty to bad breath, cellulite, and flat feet. Or what casting directors call, character actor!”.
Despite the awkward tension Koy has already created, he begins to attack the crowd. “Yo, I got the gig ten days ago! You want a perfect monologue? Yo…shut up! You’re kidding me right? I wrote some of these and they’re the ones you’re laughing at”. After his jokes about Barbie completely flop, he quickly becomes defensive. It is clear that Koy is desperately trying to defend himself by throwing his writers under the bus.
The following morning of the show, Koy made an appearance on the ABC program “GMA3”. According to The New York Times, Koy states, “It’s a tough room. And it was a hard job, I’m not going to lie. Getting that gig, and then having the amount of time that we had to prepare — that was a crash course”.
Koy still insists that a week and a half was not enough time to prepare a ten minute monologue. He also states that hosting is a tough job, a valid remark. It takes strength to talk in front of an audience of 1,400 people as well as millions of viewers at home. A number of comedians turned down the job before Koy accepted. With that being said, should we cut Jo some slack?
