Hosting a Hollywood awards show can be a notoriously difficult task, with an audience of image-conscious A-list celebrities and a large television audience on the receiving end reviewing the material in real time. After Jo Koy's performance as host of this year's Golden Globes drew criticism, he admitted on Monday that it was “a tough space.”
“Well, I had fun – you know, it was a moment I'll always remember,” Koy said on ABC's “GMA3” on Monday, noting he only had a week and a half to prepare. “It’s a hard space. And it was a tough job, I'm not going to lie. Getting the job and then having the time we had to prepare – it was a crash course.”
At Sunday's awards ceremony, parts of Koy's opening monologue appeared to fall flat in the ballroom, causing the comedian to become defensive. “I got the job 10 days ago!” he said. “You want a perfect monologue? Yo, shut up. You're kidding me, right? Slow down, I’ve written some of these – and you’re the one you’re laughing at.”
Koy's material focused on more standard celebrity banter. Last year, when Jerrod Carmichael was the host, he delivered a provocative performance, immediately addressing the unrest over the lack of black voting rights at the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the organization that ran the Golden Globes until its dissolution.
Koy's opening speech touched on diversity and pointed out the whiteness in the room, but otherwise it was fairly standard fare, including a joke about Hollywood's favorite weight-loss drug. (“The color purple also happens to your butt when you take Ozempic,” he joked.)
Many of the on-screen clips drew muted reactions, but the reaction on social media and from some critics was harsher. (A headline in the Guardian read: “The joke’s on Jo Koy: The Golden Globes host delivers a bad performance for the ages.”)
Koy said in the interview that he would be “lying” if he said the criticism “doesn't hurt.”
“There was a little moment where I thought, 'Ah, hosting is just a hard job,'” Koy said. “Yes, I’m a stand-up comedian, but this hosting position is a different style.”
One reaction from the audience immediately became a meme: When Koy joked that the Globes had “less camera footage of Taylor Swift” than NFL telecasts – referring to the team's frequent reaction shots of her recent appearances at Kansas City Chiefs games to cheer on tight end Travis Kelce – Swift, who was sitting in the audience, looked unimpressedShe sips her drink coolly. In his interview, Koy admitted that the joke was “a little flat.”
So one of the interviewers asked if he could accept the invitation to host if he could do it all over again?
“It’s a hard job,” he replied, “I’m not going to lie.”