Your 2021 Golden Globes Hosts Are Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, Thank God

Jenny Singer

February 28, 2021 at 8:00 AM·6 min read

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One detail about Tina Fey and Amy Poehler’s friendship is burned in my mind. As they return to cohost the Golden Globes for the fourth time this Sunday night, February 28, consider this.

It was 2001, and Poehler was just starting out at Saturday Night Live, where Fey was head writer and onto which she had been trying to recruit her longtime friend for years. Fey recalls in her memoir Bossypants that the cast and writers were gathered for rehearsal and Poehler was joking around. Jimmy Fallon, who was one of the show’s biggest stars at the time, put on a high-pitched, whiny voice, and said to Poehler, “Stop that! It’s not cute! I don’t like it!”

Poehler, Fey remembers, whipped around and spat, “I don’t fucking care if you like it.”

Fey was elated. “I remember thinking, My friend is here! My friend is here!” she writes. “Amy made it clear that she wasn’t there to be cute. She was there to do what she wanted to do and she did not fucking care if you like it.”

I think many of us feel, every time we see Tina Fey and Amy Poehler together, “My friends are here! My friends are here!” Just watching them appear onstage seems to cause a surge of serotonin. Their comedy is so beloved, but they also represent something huge. They're funny, creative women who don’t just take a seat at the boy’s club but actually create more room for each other. Their return as cohosts of the Golden Globes comes when we most miss them. We need our friends, even virtual celeb friends, more than ever.

Also important: The Golden Globes is, infamously, the drunkest awards show. We love the luxe vibe of the Oscars, the loudness of the Grammys, the low-key drama of the Billboard Music Awards. But at the Golden Globes, which kicks off awards season, celebs converge for a long, booze-filled dinner party that, lucky for us, happens to be televised. And when we’re really lucky, they’re roasted by Tina and Amy.

I mean...Emily in Paris is nominated. Olivia Colman is up for awards in multiple categories. Hamilton is somehow in the mix. Don’t you want to see what our girls are going to say? Or, possibly, rap?

As we await the moment they take the virtual stage to host the Globes once more on Sunday night, let’s take a look back at their best jokes from the previous years they’ve hosted. Yes, even the Taylor Swift controversy. In the words of Poehler at the 2014 Globes: Ladies, kick off your shoes; gentlemen, try them on and see how horrible they are.

Golden Globes 2013

I haven’t seen a group of people this terrified at the prospect of two women simply standing at the front of a room since my U.S. history teachers proctored the A.P. exam. This entire opener is perfection. It doesn’t matter that the jokes are about The Hunger Games and Les Misérables; they’re as funny now as they were then, when we were all young and innocent. The singing! The face stroking! It’s all a joy. And is it bad feminism to say that Tina’s hair looks so beautiful I am salivating? Can I admit that?

Now, here is where some essential drama happens that, personally, I would be interested in seeing analyzed by a gender studies Ph.D. dissertation. The CNN clip below covers the joke Fey made about Taylor Swift at the Globes, and the response Swift gave two months later, in a Vanity Fair interview. On one hand, Swift was only in her early 20s and dealing with constant sexism in the media and from the public. On the other hand, who implies that Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are going to hell? Who does that??

“Aw, I feel bad if she was upset. I am a feminist and she is a young and talented girl,” Poehler said, when asked about it later that year. “That being said, I do agree I am going to hell. But for other reasons. Mostly boring tax stuff.” You can see Fey do a callback to the controversy here, at the 2014 Globes:

Golden Globes 2014

What’s an awards-show joke that lives rent-free in your mind? Mine is this one, at 5:05 in the video below.

“Gravity is nominated for Best Film,” Fey says. “It’s the story of how George Clooney would rather float away into space and die than spend one more minute with a woman his own age.” I do not think it is an exaggeration to suggest that George Clooney may have taken this as a wake-up call to work on his commitment issues—by the time he faced Tina and Amy at the 2015 Globes the following year, he was married.

Other extremely important moments from the 2014 Globes: Julia Louis-Dreyfus vaping, Martin Scorsese actually shivering with fear at being called out by Fey and Poehler, and this joke, also from Fey: “For his role in Dallas Buyers Club, Matthew McConaughey lost 45 pounds, or what actresses call: being in a movie.”

Bonus content: Poehler won a Globe that night, while cohosting, while doing a bit that involved sitting on Bono’s back and getting a massage. And people say women can’t have it all!

Golden Globes 2015

“Welcome, you bunch of despicable, spoiled, minimally talented brats!” Fey opens the 2015 Golden Globes, domming them and us, instantly. At the 2015 Globes we saw not just comedy, but the glorious apex of the side part. “Steve Carell’s Foxcatcher look took two hours to put on, including his hairstyling and makeup,” Fey says, in another engrave-it-in-my-neurons joke. “Just for comparison, it took me three hours today to prepare for my role, as Human Woman.” Poehler jokes that Wes Anderson arrived on “a bicycle made of antique tuba parts,” and tells Frances McDormand she’s the only person in the world she would save in a fire.

Their opener ends, spectacularly, with a live game of Would You Rather. Why hasn’t NBC given these women a TV show dedicated to ogling celebrity men called Would You Rather? Even Ricky Gervais, Fey and Poehler’s competitor for long-running Globes host, looked intimidated this year.