The Most Awkward Jokes at the 2024 Golden Globes Show
Hosting an awards show is truly one of the most difficult gigs in show business, and only the most talented hosts make it look natural and easy. Unfortunately for 2024 Golden Globes host Jo Koy, standards are pretty high for this show, which has been the venue for excellent monologues from hosts like Ricky Gervais, Jerrod Carmichael, and of course, Tina Fey & Amy Poehler. That's not to say the veteran stand-up comic Koy completely died up there, he got some solid zingers in, but this monologue and other jokes felt significantly more awkward in the room than in previous years.
We're not trying to say that you should never make fun of celebrities—look back at previous shows and you'll see that hosts didn't pull their punches. As Koy himself also said onstage, he was booked to do this show only 10 days beforehand—a tight time crunch to prepare a perfect monologue. If you want to be spared the secondhand embarrassment of watching these jokes falter, here is a recap of the eight most unbelievably awkward jokes at the Globes. Koy is also a very funny comic, so you should give his material another shot by watching one of his Netflix specials, or check him out live on tour.
Shouting out Beef
Before we dive into the flops, we should highlight a good joke from this set! Koy had a funny bit about being asked to host. "Then they asked me if I saw every movie and TV show and I said yes... I lied! I only watched Beef. Love you Ali [Wong]." We've all been there some years when awards season rolls around.
"Kevin Costner is here!"
Koy's opening bits were pretty decent, with the unfortunate exception of his very first show of the night. After expressing gratitude for the opportunity, Koy pointed out Costner and said "Kevin Costner is never here! Kevin is like, in a mountain with a cow or something, but today he’s here." If you want an invitation to Costner's ranch, just ask him at the afterparty.
The Barbenheimer bit...
This joke definitely should have stayed on the cutting-room floor. "Oppenheimer and Barbie are competing for Cinematic Box Office Achievement. Oppenheimer is based on a 721-page Pulitzer prize-winning book about the Manhattan Project, and Barbie is [based] on a plastic doll..." Even if you didn't like Barbie that much, it's hard to not see the framing of this joke as super condescending.
Cellulite & character actors
Most of the Barbie bits weren't even close to the strongest of the night. "The key moment in Barbie is when she goes from perfect beauty to bad breath, cellulite, and flat feet. Or, what casting directors call a character actor." Koy even followed this up with an odd recovery line, "Some [jokes] I wrote, some other people wrote."
"I got the gig 10 days ago!"
After a few lukewarm responses to jokes from the crowd, Koy said, "Yo, I got the gig ten days ago, you want a perfect monologue? Shut up! You are kidding me, right? Slow down, I wrote some of these, and they’re the ones you’re laughing at." Telling the crowd to shut up, and poking fun at writers for their jokes not landing aren't exactly great strategies for getting them on your side again.
De Niro Fan Moment
You might as well take your chance to sing the praises and fan out on your favorite movie star, but that moment would have landed better with a great joke to punctuate it. "Your latest performance has got to be your greatest performance ever," Koy began. "How'd you get her pregnant at 80? CGI?" At least this one seemed to get a chuckle from De Niro himself.
Prince Harry & Netflix
While praising Imelda Staunton's portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II on The Crown, Koy joked, "Her portrayal of the Queen was so good, Prince Harry called her and asked her for money." Look, we don't need to be defending the Royals, but it was just a bit of a softball. Koy threw this joke's writer under the bus a little too, saying, "That one's not mine," even though it got some laughs. He also cracked that Harry and Meghan, "were still getting paid millions of dollars for doing absolutely nothing, and that’s just by Netflix."
The Taylor Swift Joke
The joke that (of course) got the most media attention was a crack about Swift's attendance at Kansas City Chiefs games. "As you know, we came on after a football doubleheader. The big difference between the Golden Globes and the NFL? On the Golden Globes, we have fewer camera shots of Taylor Swift, I swear," Koy said. Swift's reaction added more humor to the moment for those watching the broadcast, but it was an undeniably flat joke.
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