The jokes of comedian Jo Koy did not land well with the Hollywood powerhouse crowd during his historic gig as the first Filipino-American to host the Golden Globe Awards.
Jo Koy immediately trended on X, formerly Twitter, on Monday morning, January 8 (Manila Time) as netizens expressed their disappointment and dismay on X (formerly Twitter) at the stand-up comic’s ‘bad tasting’ jokes.
“Jo Koy is bringing unimaginative misogyny and ugly behavior front and center at this year’s #GoldenGlobes,” one X user said.
The comedian’s hosting started roughly when he compared Barbie and Oppenheimer, the two most significant films of 2023, and proceeded with a crude joke about the latter.
“Oppenheimer and Barbie are competing for cinematic box office achievement. Oppenheimer is based on a 724-page Pulitzer Prize-winning book about the Manhattan Project, and Barbie is based on a plastic doll with big boobies,” he said, to audible groans from the crowd.
Blaming his writers
Koy then proceeded to dissect the blockbuster fantasy-comedy film further.
“The key moment in Barbie is when she goes from perfect beauty to bad breath, cellulite and flat feet — or what casting directors call ‘character actor.”
Silence.
Flailing, the comedian then directed the blame at his writers.
“Some I wrote, some other people wrote. Yo, I got the gig ten days ago! Do you want a perfect monologue? Shut up! You’re kidding me, right? I wrote some of these, and they’re the ones you’re laughing at,” he said.
Taylor Swift was on the receiving end of one of Koy’s jokes – but the megastar refused to play along.
“As you know, we came on after a football doubleheader. What is the big difference between the Golden Globes and the NFL? On the Golden Globes, I swear we have fewer camera shots of Taylor Swift,” said Koy.
Cut to an unamused Swift, who simply sipped her champagne. The joke was a reference to Swift being the girlfriend of Travis Kelce, a football player for the Kansas City Chiefs of the National Football League.
To be fair, Jo Koy, whose real name is Joseph Glenn Herbert Sr., was tapped to host the Golden Globes Awards only on 21 December 2023, or less than a month before the award show.
Many stand-up comics had turned down the gig due to the lack of time to prepare for it. But Koy jumped in — kudos to what one commentator had called his “balls of iron” — but the lack of preparation clearly, uncomfortably showed.