Golden Globes 2024 Recap: Koy Vey

Amy Sussman/Getty Images

The Golden Globes, Hollywood’s most embattled award show, returned on January 7 with a few new award categories, a first-time host, and the impressive feat of getting Taylor Swift to show up. But as a TV event, the 81st Globes ceremony was rough, lacking much of the fun and spontaneity that can make it refreshing counterprogramming in contrast to the highly produced Academy Awards.

Some of the blame can be placed on emcee Jo Koy, who bricked his opening monologue and was practically never heard from again, but the Globes—in its first year since the controversial Hollywood Foreign Press Association ceased existence in favor of a more amorphous and diverse voting body—didn’t exactly right the ship. There were technical problems, including a labyrinthine seating chart that led to many awkward pauses as winners made their way to stage. And even though there were a number of genuinely exciting victors (Ayo Edebiri for The Bear, Anatomy of a Fall for Best Screenplay), the show ultimately lacked sizzle, doing little to prove the continued relevance of award shows in the 2020s. There wasn’t even much good meme material, save for a quietly-seething Bradley Cooper.

Below is what stuck out to GQ from the Globes, which we should all hope isn’t an indicator for how the rest of the 2024 award season will look.

Oppenheimer solidifies itself as an Oscar favorite, while Killers of the Flower Moon fades.

The two most conventionally Oscars-y films of 2023 went head-to-head in several major categories (Best Motion Picture - Drama, Best Director, Best Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama, Best Supporting Actor), and Nolan’s epic biopic emerged a clear winner. It netted awards for both Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey, Jr., and Nolan took home Best Director and Best Motion Picture after going 0-for-6 in his first two decades of Globe nods.

In some ways, Nolan's Director win feels similar to the awards lavished upon Martin Scorsese for The Departed, which saw him take home his only Best Director Oscar, though he had won the equivalent Golden Globe for Gangs of New York. Lily Gladstone walked away with Killers' sole win of the night, a deserving Best Actress in a drama.

Oppenheimer significantly outperformed Killers at the domestic and global box office, though both films found themselves in very similar conversations about the increasing rareness of big budget historical projects supported by major studios. Oppenheimer also seems likely to take home ensemble cast honors at the SAG Awards, while both are sure to rack up technical Oscar nods in categories like cinematography, production design, and costume design.

At this point, Oppenheimer is the heavy betting favorite to win Best Picture, Best Director, and the major actor awards, though the Academy never fails to buck convention, and the strong showings from both Poor Things and Anatomy of a Fall are worth monitoring.

R.I.P. Jo Koy, we hardly knew ye.

Much has been said about primetime award-show hosting not being the desired gig it used to be, but comedian Jo Koy had an opportunity to significantly boost his profile as the night’s emcee. He was given the job on extremely short notice, announced as the host just two weeks before the show. “When Tina [Fey] and all those other hosts got the gig, they had months to prepare. I’m literally looking at just days! It’s been a crash course in hosting,” he told Variety on January 3. It was reported that several prominent stars turned down the job (including eventual winner Ali Wong, SmartLess podcast trio Will Arnett, Sean Hayes and Jason Bateman, and even 2022 Oscars survivor Chris Rock) so clearly the Globes were scrambling to find someone to take the relatively thankless role.

But Koy’s stint was a disaster from the opening moments, with a clunky monologue received so middlingly that Koy started bucking back at the crowd like a flailing stand-up at the Laugh Factory. The jokes were predictable—Ryan Gosling was hot as Ken, Barry Keoghan has a big penis, Barbie is based on a doll—and had little of the observational flavor he’s shown on Chelsea Lately or in his standup specials. “I got the gig 10 days ago! You want a perfect monologue? Yo, shut up. You're kidding me, right?" he barked. “Slow down, I wrote some of these and they are the ones you are laughing at.” Once he started fighting back against the audience—and throwing the show's writers under the bus in the process—it was clearly over, and Koy’s performance goes down as one of the bigger award show messes in recent memory.

Reporters present at the show noted that the assembled A-listers were less than pleased. The New York Times’ Nicole Sperling wrote that a major director said, “This is a disaster,” while fellow NYT reporter Kyle Buchanan commented on the lengthy riffing from award presenters, potentially an indication that they cut some of Koy’s bits.

Koy was conspicuously absent from the show for much of its middle and end section, popping back up briefly at the conclusion, clearly chastened. The only silver lining? It'll be practically impossible for next year's host to look good by comparison; whoever's offered the job for 2025 should take it.

The Globes show no fear in angering the Swifties.

Did you know Taylor Swift was at the Golden Globes? After all, they only cut to her, by our count, 275 times—including her staring daggers at host Jo Koy following a lazy joke about her newfound ubiquity during NFL broadcasts. Swift's The Eras Tour movie was nominated for the inaugural Cinematic and Box Office Achievement award, which was well-earned given its stature as both the most financially successful concert movie ever and a top-10 overall grosser at the domestic box office, an uncommon feat for these sorts of projects. To her credit, she seemed genuinely happy for Greta Gerwig and the Barbie team when they took home the statue, but if you believe award shows like the Globes are scripted it’s a bit surprising to pull a star of Swift’s magnitude and not find a way to get her onstage. Then again, even without saying a word to the crowd, she managed to dominate online discourse due to a private chat with Selena Gomez that has already been broken down by lip readers and will surely be the most Zapruder’d moment of the 2024 Golden Globes.

Anatomy of a Fall earned some well-deserved hardware.

One of 2023’s best films and a masterpiece of courtroom drama, Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall seemed like one of those movies destined to accrue nominations, but not convert them into wins going against goliaths like Oppenheimer, Barbie, and Killers of the Flower Moon. But the French film took home two significant awards at the 2024 Globes, winning Best Picture - Non-English Language against a strong field that included two other Best Motion Picture - Drama nominees in Past Lives and The Zone of Interest, and also winning Best Screenplay against over Nolan, Scorsese, and Gerwig. Triet seemed genuinely stunned by the latter win, talking about how she and her partner/cowriter Arthur Harari never thought the film would find the enthusiastic audience it did. Anatomy of a Fall was already a likely bet for nods in Best Picture, Best Actress, Best International Feature Film, and Best Original Screenplay, but after a strong Globes showing it seems like a genuine dark horse. Plus, we got to hear 50 Cent’s “P.I.M.P.” during a major televised awards show in 2024, so that’s a win unto itself.

Curious logistical decisions kept the show from ever developing a rhythm.

As often cited by press and presenters, the Golden Globes are the only major award show that serves alcohol, but what caused hiccups at the 2024 edition was the layout of the Beverly Hilton, forcing winners to walk lengthy, convoluted paths just to make it to the stage. Paul Giamatti, winner of Best Actor in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy, lamented that his knees hurt, and when large ensembles for Succession and Oppenheimer had to make their way to the stage the wait was frequently interminable. (May December producer Christine Vachon lamented the seating arrangement during the show via Twitter.)

Viewers often complain about the length of winners’ speeches, but the Globes kept such a tight timer that nearly every victor seemed harried, and several, including Emma Stone, even commented on how quickly they had to wrap things up. Modern day award shows want to keep things breezy for an audience with fractured attention spans, likely watching with a phone in hand and a tablet on their laps, but the Globes took it too far.

Succession finished its run with a well-deserved clean-up.

Both an all-time actors’ showcase and a propulsively-scripted drama, Succession emerged as an unlikely cultural phenomenon in the last half-decade, and its fourth season was the prestige TV event of 2023. The show doing well at the Globes was hardly surprising, but it was still satisfying to see Jesse Armstrong’s show take home Best Television Series - Drama, while Sarah Snook, Kieran Culkin, and Matthew Macfadyen won their acting categories. No disrespect to Elizabeth Debicki in The Crown, but it’s hard to not wish that J. Smith-Cameron had won Best Supporting Actress in a Series, just for the sake of consistency. Of the Succession winners, Culkin had the best speech, with a humorous shot at Pedro Pascal and a candid reflection on his up-and-down career, including his first Golden Globes nomination, in 2003, for the indie flick Igby Goes Down. Still, Jeremy Strong carried the day by doing the most Jeremy Strong thing possible: not showing up at all.

Originally Appeared on GQ