Jo Koy Defended by Whoopi Goldberg and Steve Martin After Golden Globes Backlash: “Hosting Gigs Are Just Brutal”
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Whoopi Goldberg and Steve Martin are both defending Jo Koy after his Golden Globes hosting gig earned him a wave of criticism from viewers, industry members and TV critics.
While hosting The View on Tuesday, Goldberg expressed that in Hollywood, “hosting gigs are just brutal. … If you’ve not been in these rooms before, and you’re sort of thrust out there, it’s hit or miss,” Goldberg said. “I love Jo Koy. He makes me just crazy because he’s funny. I don’t know whether it was the room. I don’t know whether the jokes. I didn’t get to see it. But I do know that he is as good as it gets when it comes to stand-up.”
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The actress, host and comedian pointed to her own challenges hosting events as an example of the difficulty nailing these kinds of Hollywood gigs, even as fellow View co-hosts offered her praise. “If you read any of the reviews of some of the gigs that I’ve had, where they’ve just wished me into the cornfield,” she said laughing. “I learned the room.”
Actor and comedian Steve Martin also threw his support behind Koy on Threads, after Koy garnered backlash for his Taylor Swift joke and had earned largely negative reviews on social media as Sunday night unfolded.
“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,” he wrote. “So, Congratulations to Jo Koy, who took on the toughest gig in show business, hit, missed, was light on his feet, and now has twenty minutes of new material for his stand up!”
Koy appeared on GMA3 on Monday morning to talk about his performance, where the co-hosts described him as appearing deflated from the experience. “I had fun. It was a moment I’ll always remember,” he said of his time hosting the 2024 awards show. He then paused. “It’s a tough room. It was a hard job. I’m not gonna lie. Getting that gig and then having the amount of time that we had to prepare, that was a crash course.
“I’d be lying if it doesn’t hurt,” he added. “I hit a little moment there [during the monologue] where I was just like, ‘Ah.’ Hosting is a tough gig. Yes, I am a stand-up comic, but that hosting position is a different style. It’s not the same style.”
Responding to his joke about Swift, Koy it admitted it was “weird,” but argued it was more about the NFL. “I was trying to make fun of the NFL using cutaways and how the Globes didn’t have to do that. So it was more of a jab towards the NFL; it just didn’t come out that way.”
During the show, Koy was already poised to respond to the potential reaction of his hosting, telling the audience, “I got the gig 10 days ago!” and asking, “You want a perfect monologue?”
“Some I wrote, some other people wrote,” said Koy, who was announced as host on Dec. 21. “I wrote some of these, and those are the ones you’re laughing at.”
More comedians have came out in some defense of Koy, with Sarah Cooper and Michael Che turning aim at the star-studded audience who was in the room at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. “I’m really unimpressed with the acting skills of everyone in the audience. Because Jo Koy, maybe he bombed a little bit, but they’re actors, they should be able to pretend,” Cooper joked in a stand-up set, which shared to her Instagram. Che took to his Instagram with a similar take, also noting, “Comedians should boycott hosting awards shows.”
Mean Girls star Reneé Rapp, however, took issue with Koy’s jabs about women during the event, naming “the man that was making a bunch of jokes about women last night at the Golden Globes” as one of her “out” trends for 2024.
Koy’s hosting gig marked just the second time an Asian person had hosted the show in Globes history, after Sandra Oh’s stint in 2019. He also recently wrapped his Funny Is Funny World Tour.
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