Here Are The Celebrities Who Defended Jo Koy After He Received Backlash For Hosting The Golden Globes
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The 2024 Golden Globes was a great night for many celebrities, but not Jo Koy.
Jo hosted the 81st ceremony, and it quickly became apparent that people were not vibing with his jokes — at the awards show or on the internet.
Never invite Jo Koy to one of these again please. So, so awful. pic.twitter.com/Oqhpeiosp5
— Sethsfilmreviews (@sethsfilmreview) January 8, 2024
Maybe it was the uncomfortable self-realization mid-joke that he was bombing.
Golden Globes host Jo Koy just went off-script after one of his jokes bombed: “I got the gig 10 days ago! You want a perfect monologue? Yo, shut up. You’re kidding me, right? Slow down. I wrote some of these, and they’re the ones you’re laughing at.”#GoldenGlobes2024 pic.twitter.com/K6DIDtdCes
— Spencer Althouse (@SpencerAlthouse) January 8, 2024
Or perhaps, it was the joke about Taylor Swift and her immediate reaction.
oof. I don’t think Taylor Swift liked Jo Koy’s joke about her…#GoldenGlobes pic.twitter.com/6Eonu42KJE
— Spencer Althouse (@SpencerAlthouse) January 8, 2024
Or maybe it was his misogynistic jokes about Barbie, which has become one of the highest-grossing films and created a reimagined feminist icon.
Following the Globes, several celebrities supported Jo, while a couple took it as an opportunity to double down on the criticism. Here's what a few celebrities said:
1.Greta Gerwig brushed off Jo's joke about Barbie being a movie about a "doll with big boobs" with a fair and neutral response.
"Well, he's not wrong," she said during a BBC Radio 4 Today interview.
"She's the first doll that was mass-produced with breasts, so he was right on. And you know, I think that so much of the project of the movie was unlikely because it is about a plastic doll… Barbie by her very construction has no character, no story, she's there to be projected upon.
"The insight that [Barbie's creator] Ruth Handler had when she was watching her daughter play with baby dolls is she realized, 'My daughter doesn't want to pretend to be a mother. She wants to pretend to be a grown woman,'" Greta added.
2.Kevin Hart called Jo "an amazing comedian" and thought he handled "bombing on stage" well.
"I think Jo Koy's an amazing comedian. Always has been. [He] sells out arenas all over," Kevin said. "This is not anything [he] needs to make a moment out of. ... It's a tough room. Without the knowledge and understanding of how to navigate in that room, you can have some moments — some bumps. Jo is fine."
"Jo Koy is a talented, funny fucking guy. And forever will be," Kevin added.
"People want to highlight the world of bad when bad presents itself, but there is a world of good behind it. Jo will be good and always has been. I'm fine with Jo. I love Jo. I can't wait to see what else Jo does. Industry or not industry. He's made it this far. He'll make it after."
3.Howard Stern defended Jo on his radio show, addressing that awards shows are "fucking hard to do."
"Nobody wanted to host this thing," Howard said on his Sirius XM show. "Finally, everyone's getting smart. Those shows are fucking difficult to do."
Howard noted that Jimmy Kimmel, who hosted and will be hosting the Academy Awards again this year for the third time, gets at least six months to prepare for his hosting gig. "Ten days? You're doomed! Standing up there and telling those jokes to a bunch of people who don't wanna be laughed at is the biggest bummer in the world," he added. "Hollywood has no sense of humor about itself."
"Those people do not want to be made fun of. They're very concerned about their image," he continued. "Comedians are supposed to be funny. And the only way to be funny is to be cynical. So why would you want to go to an event where they don't let you be cynical?"
4.Steve Martin had kind words for Jo, saying, "It's a very difficult job."
Steve wrote on Threads, "I tip my hat to anyone who steps out on stage to host a live awards show. It's a very difficult job and not for the squeamish."
"I know because I'm still throwing up from the last time I did it in 2010." Steve hosted the Academy Awards thrice (2001, 2003, and 2010).
"So, Congratulations to Jo Koy, who took on the toughest gig in show business, hit, missed, was light on his feet, and now has 20 minutes of new material for his standup!"
5.Whoopi Goldberg responded to Jo Koy's backlash, explaining how "these hosting gigs are brutal."
On a Monday episode of The View, the daytime cohost said, "If you don't know the room, if you've not been in these rooms before, you're sort of thrust out there. It's hit or miss."
"Now, I love Jo Koy. He, to me, makes me just crazy because he's funny. I don't know whether it was the room. I don't know whether it was the jokes. I didn't get to see it," Whoopi, who hosted the Academy Awards four times (1994, 1996, 1999, 2002), continued. "But I do know that he is as good as it gets when it comes to stand-ups. That is not an easy game."
Whoopi admitted that even she received backlash for some of her past hosting gigs. "If you read any of the reviews of some of the gigs that I've had [laughs] where they've just, you know, whisked me into the cornfield [laughs] to die on the vine. I mean, it's not an easy gig."
6.Melissa Rivers claimed that Jo's jokes "deserved laughs," and he got "no love" from the audience.
"I think he got short-tripped and no love, and that was not justified," Melissa said in an Us Weekly video. "Anyone who knows these shows knows that the host preps for months, and they have a team of writers."
"He only got hired 10 days ago, and sometimes you can feel that. I think because he was an unknown to a lot of them, [they] decided they're not going to laugh.
"A lot of the material, I wouldn't say, was his strongest but was strong enough that it should've gotten laughs, and no one was insulted," Melissa continued. "I just think the room decided they weren't going to have fun," she added. "The Globes are supposed to be the most fun."
7.Stephen A. Smith questioned whether or not the joke against Taylor Swift was offensive and claimed we have become a "soft-ass society."
"Yall gonna put comedians out of business. “Laughter is valuable, y’all. It’s a huge commodity," Stephen said. "I want to laugh."
"You get a good joke on somebody, so be it," he said before explaining how he can take jokes made about himself on his own shows. "What the hell is wrong with y'all?"
"We have become a really soft-ass society. We can't take anything. Seriously. This is embarrassing — that this guy may actually end up taking heat for that innocuous joke."
8.Michael Che called out awards show audiences on social media to defend comedians.
“Comedians should boycott hosting award shows,” Michel wrote in a now-deleted Instagram post. “For one, it’s very difficult to make movie stars laugh."
"They’re way too self-conscious to have a good time."
"Two, they don’t even want to laugh,” Michael continued. “They’re too busy thinking about their careers and their speeches and their ’cause’… They think they wanna be made fun of, but they actually don’t. They actually just want their trophy. And a nice photo.”
9.However, not everybody came to his defense. Reneé Rapp slammed Jo's Golden Globes jokes, grouping him with a gross cat-caller who ruined her morning.
The star of Mean Girls shared her "ins" and "outs" for 2024 with her costars on an episode of Today with Hoda & Jenna and quickly shut down Jo's attempt at getting laughs from the Golden Globes crowd.
"My outs? First, is the man that yelled at me this morning at 8:00 a.m. and told me to smile. Go to hell," Reneé said. "And also, my out was the man that was making a bunch of jokes about women last night at the Golden Globes."
10.Even seasoned Days of our Lives actor Diedre Hall chimed in to drag Jo Koy, and called him a "complete embarrassment."
Did Jo Koy's Golden Globes jokes go too far, or do you agree that it was just a tough crowd?
Let's talk about it in the comments.
Check out all of our Golden Globes coverage here.
