Jo Koy is getting candid about his Golden Globes hosting gig and the negative reactions to his introductory monologue.
Speaking on “GMA3: What You Need to Know,” Koy told his hosts that he “had fun” on Sunday night. “You know, it was a moment that I’ll always remember.” At the same time, he added, “It’s a tough room. It was a hard job... getting that gig and then having the amount of time that we had to prepare.”
When asked about the criticism his monologue faced, Koy said, “I’d be lying [if I said] that it doesn’t hurt. I hit a little moment there where I was just like, ‘Ah.’ Hosting is a tough gig. And yes, I am a stand-up comic, but that hosting position is a different style.”
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Viewers criticized Koy on Sunday night for throwing his writers under the bus. As some of his jokes began to fall flat, he quipped, “Yo, shut up. I wrote some of these, and those are the ones you’re gonna laugh at.” Meanwhile, Taylor Swift and her fans also didn’t seem to love Koy’s comment that the key difference between the Golden Globes and the NFL is that at the Globes, “we have fewer camera shots of Taylor Swift.” (Benign as the joke might’ve been, Koy began a mini-apology tour for that riff since Sunday night.)
“I kind of went in and did the whole writers thing,” Koy told “GMA3” of his comment about the show’s writers, “and it’s just like no, we were all in that room together. We just had 10 days to try and write something for this monologue. It was a crash course, and I feel bad, but I gotta still say that I loved what I did.”
Koy also told his hosts that he believes his Swift joke, which “was just a little flat,” might’ve been the moment when he really started to lose the room. “It was a weird joke, I guess, but it was more on the NFL, you know what I mean?” he said, echoing his previous comments. “I was trying to make fun of the NFL using cutaways and the Globes didn’t have to do that. So it was more of a jab towards the NFL. ... It just didn’t come out that way.”
When “GMA3” asked if he would take the job again, Koy seemed grateful but reluctant. “That’s a tough gig—I’m not gonna lie,” he said. “I really love the art of stand-up, and it was cool that the opportunity came to me. Hosting is a beast, and that’s about it. ... I literally got the call and haven’t slept since, trying to write something.”
Throughout Koy’s interview, his hosts pointed out that he seemed a little downcast and occasionally tried to cheer him up with comments like “Don’t beat yourself up.” Still, he said, “I wanted to give a little bit more of me and I fell a little short, and that’s all.”
At the end of the day, however, Koy still embraced the rarity of getting such an offer. “That’s one thing I want to be proud about,” he said. It was a long journey, and the opportunity came, and no one knew where the Golden Globes was gonna be, and then last second CBS picked up the show and everyone was kind of turning down the offer because of the time, and I jumped on it. I was like, ‘You know what? Let’s try it. Let’s go for it.’”
Put another way to KTLA, Koy said, “I was invited to one of the biggest parties in Hollywood; it’s fun. I am a comic. A host is different... It’s not the same element, and people don't understand that in this industry.”
For more, listen to Jo Koy on The Last Laugh podcast.
