A general rule of comedy: If you’re scolding the audience for failing to laugh at your jokes, you’ve already lost. Apparently, however, no one told Golden Globes host Jo Koy that—because throughout his monologue opening Sunday’s ceremony, he did just that, berating A-listers for failing to see the humor in jokes like, “The Color Purple is also what happens to your butt when you take Ozempic.”
Hosting awards shows has been a less-than-sexy gig in Hollywood for a while now, but the Golden Globes had a particularly hard time locking down a host for this year’s ceremony after a flurry of PR scandals. Sunday’s monologue might’ve faced some confirmation bias, but the jokes were objectively... not the strongest.
Throughout Koy’s monologue, the largely silent audience could also be heard offering light laughter and, often, groans. Koy, meanwhile, decided to throw the show’s writers under the bus: “I got the gig 10 days ago,” he said. “You want a perfect monologue? Shut up! ... I wrote some of these [jokes], and they're the ones you're laughing at.”
For those of us at home, it was unclear who wrote which jokes, but the bombs were plentiful.
“Oppenheimer and Barbie are competing for cinematic office box achievements,” Koy said at one point. “Oppenheimer is based on a 720 one-page Pulitzer Prize winning book about Manhattan Project, and Barbie is based on a plastic doll with big boobies.”
Koy continued, “I don’t want you guys to think I’m a creep, but it was weird being attracted to a plastic doll.” If that wasn’t uncomfortable enough, he added, “The key moment in Barbie is when she goes from perfect beauty to bad breath, cellulite, and flat feet. Or, what casting directors call a character actor.”
After “fanning out” over Robert DeNiro for way too long, Koy decided to try roasting him as well. “Your last performance has got to be your greatest performance ever,” he said of the Killers of the Flower Moon star. “How did you get her pregnant at 80—CGI?”
But the monologue hit a new low when Koy addressed Saltburn star Barry Keoghan by asking, “Where’s your penis seated? down front? That was the real star of the show.”
Koy dug in further after that: “If you haven't seen Saltburn, you probably have no idea what I’m talking about, so watch it. Then you'll understand what I was talking about. Then, right after, watch Barbie. And then you're going to be like, ‘Something's missing.’ And then, watch Maestro, and you’re gonna be like, ‘Oh, there it is—it’s on Bradley Cooper's face.’”
When the audience once again failed to satisfy the host with their muted response, Koy shot back, “What?! That’s hilarious!”
As badly as the monologue did in the room, it seemed to do even worse on social media. And while the actors may soon forget about how badly Koy bombed, the internet surely won’t.
