CBS
Count Jo Koy among the people who think his hosting at the Golden Globes wasn't a complete disaster.
“I think I did well under the circumstances,” he said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times.
Koy only had 10 days to prepare. He told the Times that his writers were chosen just eight days before the show; There was no writers' room until two days before, and the monologue was delivered the day before.
“We were still writing until they said we were live,” Koy said. “Absolutely cold reading, never had the chance to find out anything. And that's not an excuse, I'm just trying to paint the picture because I don't think people understand how that sets up winning in any situation. If you wrote this situation down on a piece of paper and asked, “Do you want to do this?” I guarantee everyone would say “no.” I’m glad I did it because I accepted this challenge.”
Koy said: “I will give myself an A based on my courage alone [to host the show]. I'm going to hit you over the head a million times, whoever you can think of that could have done it, I'm telling you now, they said no and I didn't. I looked at it in a different light. The history of the show is 81 years. That's 81 hosts and some repeats. I am the first Asian to ever host alone. The year is 2024 and I am the first of 81 years old. Sandra Oh was the first co-host, but I was the first solo host. Imagine if someone had said “yes” before me, we would still be at the 82nd Golden Globes and still not an Asian as a solo presenter. So if I hadn’t said yes, we still wouldn’t have been there.”
The only joke that didn't land but stirred a hornet's nest involved Taylor Swift. She didn't like the reference to her high profile on NFL television while watching her boyfriend Travis Kelce.
“I didn’t understand Taylor [Swift] tiff,” Koy said. “Mind you, this one was just rewritten 50 million times and was never finished until we had to get out. It's just weird where you put it and we kept hammering on it and cutting it off. But the entire intent of this joke was to make fun of the NFL. That's the cool thing about it [Golden] Globes is that we don't have to make cutaways for reviews. What hurts the most is that I only support Taylor. I support her, I love her work. I have nieces that I bought tickets for. There is no malicious intent in this joke. The joke is about the NFL and how they continue to use cutaways [her]. And there is an obvious reason why.
“I don’t say anything that no one says and it’s obvious what that joke was. It's about the NFL. It's like, out of everything that's happened, you choose this one. I didn't understand why because it was fun when I went out. Robert De Niro was dying and I look at him and his wife slapped him on the back and smiled and laughed and he laughed. And when I did the whole thing about him being 80, he was thrilled. And that was fun. I thought, man, this guy is so much fun. And then I did that [Swift] joke and I’m like, what just happened?”