Hosting an awards show is widely known as one of Hollywood’s most thankless jobs. If you bomb, you run the risk of getting roasted from every angle—including, as was revealed on Sunday night, by your funnier ex-partner.
Chelsea Handler took subtle aim at Jo Koy, her onetime boyfriend, in the middle of delivering her opening monologue at the 29th Critics Choice Awards. Handler was in the middle of a bit on her attraction to older men—including her desire to toss Martin Scorsese around “like a little Italian meatball”—when she delivered the jab.
“Thank you for laughing at that,” she said. “My writers wrote it.” The line drew appreciative applause and whoops from the crowd, many of whom were in attendance at the Golden Globes last Sunday.
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Infamously, Koy flatlined while doing his own opening monologue at the Globes, a hamfisted spectacle made worse by his on-the-fly decision to throw his writers under the bus. “Yo, I got the gig 10 days ago. You want a perfect monologue? Yo, shut up,” Koy said. “You’re kidding me, right? Slow down. I wrote some of these, and they’re the ones you’re laughing at.”
Koy has since apologized, telling the Los Angeles Times earlier this week that criticizing his “dope” writers was “a rookie move.” At his first post-Globes stand-up set on Friday, however, he was back on the defensive, calling his celebrity audience a “lot of marshmallows.”
“They’re delicious, but goddamn, they’re soft,” he said, according to Variety. “I just come from a different time. I see the changes that are happening. I get it, but goddamn, can we fucking laugh at ourselves?”
Handler, who dated Koy from Sept. 2021 through the next summer, was more than up to the task of cutting the rich and famous down to size. Hosting the Critics Choice Awards for the second year in a row, the comedian poked fun at stars and suits alike.
“Women were victorious in all venues,” she said at one point. “Barbie at the box office. Taylor Swift and Beyonce on their tours. Gwyneth Paltrow at that ski trial.” In a later joke referencing the Hollywood labor strikes earlier this year, she deadpanned: “Of course, nobody had a harder time this year than studio executives, who were forced to vacation for six consecutive months in a row.”
For more, listen to Chelsea Handler on The Last Laugh podcast.
