Whoopi Goldberg Schools Everyone on How ‘Brutal’ It Is to Host Award Shows

Hosting an awards show is a thankless job, according to acting legend Whoopi Goldberg. Everyone is basically expecting you to be terrible. And at Sunday’s 81st Annual Golden Globes, comedian Jo Koy found out the hard way just how difficult hosting can be.

At the Golden Globes, Koy’s monologue received mixed to negative reviews for several jokes that landed with a thud in the star-studded room. As things started going downhill, Koy blamed his short prep time.

“Yo, I got the gig 10 days ago,” Koy said during his monologue. “You want a perfect monologue? Yo, shut up. I wrote some of these, and those are the ones you’re laughing at.”

Blaming the writers after we just spent five excruciating months learning how essential they are to the business was certainly a choice. The comedian responded to critics Monday on “GMA3: What You Need to Know,” noting how different it is to emcee these sorts of shows.

One person who has Koy’s back—and knows exactly what it takes to handle this kind of gig—is Whoopi, who’s hosted the Oscars four times. On Monday’s episode of “The View” She had nothing but praise for him as a stand up comic, but she also explained that “these hosting gigs are brutal—just brutal.”

“If you don’t know the room, if you’ve not been in these rooms before and you’re sort of thrust out there. It’s hit or miss,” she said. “Now 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 it was 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 standups. That is not an easy game.”

When it comes to hosting award shows. It seems like talk show hosts like Trevor Noah handle the situation best. They’re used to being the ones who keep the trains running on time, while blending comedy into the proceedings. It also helps that Trevor views the Grammys as a celebration and he just wants to sprinkle a few jokes into the party.

These producers also need to know who they’re hiring. If you bring in Chris Rock, you should expect some off color jabs at the famous faces in the audience, which is what he’s done during his Oscars hosting stints. Of course, he’s probably learned that he needs to be careful whose name he’s calling out during those jokes.

In 2023, The Golden Globes brought in Jerrod Carmichael, who they had to assume was going to address the scandal, then got upset when he poked fun at the organization’s racism controversy. Despite what we thought of his performance, you can’t bring in someone like Carmichael, then act shocked that he made jokes about your international headline grabbing scandal.

Rumors are circulating that other comedians turned down the hosting gig before Koy was approached. As Whoopi said, it’s a “brutal” job, and not for everyone. Why do you think the Oscars just keep going back to Jimmy Kimmel every year? Once producers find something that works for their show, they have no desire to shake things up.