When Killing Eve’s Sandra Oh and Brooklyn 99’s Andy Samberg were tapped as co-hosts for this year’s Golden Globe Awards—based solely on their chemistry as co-presenters at last year’s Emmys—the announcement was met with a mixture of surprise and excitement.
“We are going to have some fun, give out some awards, and one lucky audience member will host the Oscars!” Samberg began, taking an early shot at Kevin Hart, who stepped down as next month’s Academy Awards host after his old homophobic jokes and tweets resurfaced.
“Now, some of you may be wondering why the two of us are hosting together,” Oh said, as Samberg finished her sentence with, “And the reason is we are the only two people left in Hollywood who haven't gotten in trouble for saying something offensive.”
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“That reminds me, you know what race of people really get under my skin?” Samberg asked. “The Hollywood half marathon, because it messes up all the traffic.” They continued in this vein for a while, “roasting” celebrities in the room with compliments instead of sick burns.
But later, they did include some solid at jokes at the expense of A Star Is Born’s Lady Gaga. “It just proves, and I'm just coming up with this now, that there can be 100 people in the room, and 99 don't believe in you. And you just need one to believe in you. And that was Bradley Cooper,” Oh said, mocking the viral video in which Gaga repeated that line over and over again in numerous interviews.
“Crazy Rich Asians is nominated tonight for Best Picture, Musical or Comedy,” Oh added. “It is the first studio film with an Asian-American lead since Ghost in the Shell and Aloha.”
Samberg, meanwhile, made fun of Adam McKay’s Vice, an “intense drama about Dick Cheney” that’s “actually up for Best Musical or Comedy because it erroneously invaded the wrong category.”
The diversity of the films nominated for awards was a major theme throughout their opening, and by the end of the sometimes rocky jokes, Samberg and Oh turned more serious.
“If I could take a moment here in all honesty, I said yes to the fear of being on this stage tonight, because I wanted to be here to look out into this audience and witness this moment of change,” Oh said, on the verge of tears. “And I'm not fooling myself, next year could be different, it probably will be.”
“But right now, this moment is real,” she continued. “Trust me, it is real. Because I see you. And I see you. All of these faces of change. And now so will everyone else.”
