By Jana Monji
The big news is that while Oppenheimer, a movie about the whitewashed history of a bomb, won a total of five awards at the 81st Golden Globes at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles, an Asian American host bombed so badly it was nuclear hot. If you didn’t know who Jo Koy was, Hollywood watchers and your autocorrect will know now.
If someone writes Jo Toy (or Jo Boy), the autocorrect just may take over and fix your mistake. The 52-year-old Koy (born Joseph Glenn Herbert Sr.) was born in the Philippines and is Filipino on his mother’s side, but he was raised in Washington and Nevada. He resides in the Los Angeles area and currently has four shows streaming on Netflix: the 2017 Live from Seattle, the 2019 Comin’ in Hot, the 2020 In His Elements, and the 2022 Live from the Los Angeles Forum.
With the new management and the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strike delays, the Golden Globes announced Koy as the host on December 21, 2023, giving Koy only 10 days to prepare. If you didn’t know it, Koy reminded everyone in his midway through his opening monologue before he threw his writers under the bus: “Yo, I got the gig 10 days ago. You want a perfect monologue? I wrote some of these and they’re the ones you’re laughing at.”
The Golden Globes is struggling to rise above the scandal and the pandemic, and since June 2023 has come under the ownership of Eldridge Industries via Dick Clark Productions. More negative publicity isn’t going to help unless you believe that no publicity is a bad thing.
The monologue began with repetitive fanboy compliments, mentioning Kevin Costner’s presence. Costner’s show, Yellowstone, was not nominated but he was there as a presenter (with America Ferrera for Best Television Female Actor – Musical/Comedy Series). The person sitting near Costner was nominated (Jodi Foster for Nyad, the first fictional feature film directed by the Asian American Oscar-winning husband and wife team Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin).
Costner has won three Golden Globes: Best Director in 1991 for Dances with Wolves, Best Actor – Miniseries or Television Film for Hatfields & McCoys and last year, Best Actor – Television Series, Drama for Yellowstone. You wouldn’t know that from the monologue.
Koy then mentioned Don Cheadle, who was also not nominated for any awards. Cheadle had previously won in a tie with Gregory Peck (Best Supporting Actor in a Miniseries, The Rat Pack and Moby Dick respectively) in 1999. Cheadle also won in 2013 (Best Actor – Television Series Musical or Comedy) for House of Lies. That’s not in the monologue either.
Cheadle presented (with Kate Beckinsale) Best Female Actor – Motion Picture Drama which was a historic win for Lily Gladstone (Killers of the Flower Moon) as the first Native American to win in that category. Even her nomination was something that Koy could have recognized and celebrated, but instead when his opening monologue finally acknowledged the film, it was in a reference to Robert De Niro and his most recent “performance” in producing a seventh child at age 79. While Koy did mention Gladstone and Leonardo DiCaprio, saying they “crushed it” he made a joke about White people stealing oil and even the premise of the film. ‘The one thing I learned about that movie it that White people stole everything.”
In the film, the White villains do not triumph. Moreover, Oklahoma’s history of Native Americans is more nuanced than White versus non-White. In addition, the production team consulted with Native Americans and included Native American performers in the Los Angeles premiere. Further, when director Martin Scorsese was born (1942), Italian Americans weren’t necessarily accepted as White. Remember: Dean Martin (Dino Paul Crocetti) and Tony Bennett (Anthony Dominick Benedetto) changed their names while others like Frank Sinatra did not.
But before the mention of De Niro, the third star Koy mentioned, Meryl Streep, was nominated (Best Supporting Actress – Series, Miniseries, or Television Film) for Only Murders in the Building. Yet Koy did not mention why Streep was there, and he also failed to mention the other three nominations (Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy, Best Actress in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy for Selena Gomez and Best Actor in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy for both comedians Steve Martin and Martin Short) for that show.
Moreover, although Koy said that Streep wins everything and Streep has won the most competitive Golden Globes in acting categories (8), she has been nominated the most times: 33 (Composer John Williams comes in second place with 27). That’s a lot of losing. At this year’s Golden Globes, Streep lost again, this time to Elizabeth Debicki (The Crown).
Koy then went low for jokes about penises (Barry Keoghan of Saltburn) and Barbie’s plastic boobs and the old-fashioned method of birth control (withdrawal). The smiles and laughter seemed more nervous and polite than genuine. Koy had seen Beef and gave a shout out to Ali Wong, but not Steven Yeun. Where Koy could have unified Hollywood by talking about Los Angeles traffic and road rage which is the catalyst for action in Beef, he said nothing. Beef won three Golden Globes: Best Actor (Best Performance in a Limited Series, Anthology Series, or Motion Picture Made for Television) for Yeun, Best Actress for Wong and Best Limited Series, Anthology, Series, or Motion Picture Made for Television.
The first minority to host the show was Latina Raquel Welch (with Michael York) in 1985. The first Black host was Louis Gossett Jr. (with Leslie Nielsen and Jane Seymour) in 1993. That might seem like it took a long time, but from its first ceremony in 1944 until 1981, the Golden Globes did not have a host. In 1983, and from 1996 to 2009 there was also no host.
After Sunday night, the creative team behind the Golden Globes might be re-thinking that no-host wisdom. Koy also took a swipe at Taylor Swift saying, “As you know, we came on after a football doubleheader. The big difference between the Golden Globes and the NFL? On the Golden Globes, we have fewer camera shots of Taylor Swift, I swear.” Why?
There were other cringe-worthy moments in the transitions with the CBS announcer telling us that “Censors will be standing by” or that some star (Keri Russell) taking a selfie signals “party mode” as the Golden Globes fumbles to find its new persona. Costner’s forced banter with America Ferrera wasn’t good either.
While Ricky Gervais had previously hosted the Golden Globes under its previous configuration five times (2010, 2011, 2012, 2016 and 2020), his comedic jabs were better received. Gervais, who was not in attendance, won for Best Performance in Stand-up Comedy on Television for Ricky Gervais: Armageddon on Netflix. He had previously won for his performances on TV series (The Office in 2003 and Extras in 2007).
In his 2020 Golden Globe opening monologue, Gervais had made fun of Joe Pesci whom he “mistook” for “Baby Yoda,” but softened it by saying, “I love you man, don’t have me whacked.” He did make a Meryl Streep joke about a sequel to Sophie’s Choice and a bit about Martin Scorsese, “the greatest living director” because of “his controversial comments about the Marvel franchise” and how they “remind him of theme parks.” But Gervais then added, Gervais didn’t know what Scorsese would do at a theme park because, “he’s not big enough to go on the rides, is he?”
Koy seemed to forget that as a Netflix comedian and as an actor, he is also one of the potential future recipients. Netflix streamed all but one of the six nominated Stand-Up Comedy performances (Trevor Noah: Where Was I, Chris Rock: Selective Outrage, Amy Schumer: Emergency Contact, and Wanda Sykes: I’m an Entertainer) with Sarah Silverman: Someone You Love on HBO Max. He could have used his lack of nominations as a potential joke in his opening and run that throughout the show. Remember Ryan Gosling (who was at the Golden Globes) and Russell Crowe at the Oscars in 2016?
Jo Koy isn’t the first Asian American host. Sandra Oh (with Andy Samberg) hosted the 76th Golden Globes in 2019. In their opening dialogue, Oh and Samberg mentioned and made fun of prominent nominees as well as themselves. Samberg won a Golden Globe for Best Actor for Brooklyn Nine-Nine in 2014. Oh has two: Best Supporting Actress (TV) for Grey’s Anatomy in 2005 and Best Actress (TV) for Killing Eve in 2019. During their opening, Samberg and Oh also took nominee Jim Carrey to task for being in the wrong seating section and Carey played with it. At the end of the opening, Oh took a moment to unify and to honor. Oh said, “I said ‘yes’ to the fear of being on this stage tonight because I wanted to be here to look out into this audience and witness this moment of change. And I’m not fooling myself. Next year could be different. It probably will be. But, right now, this moment is real.”
That was when NBC was still the Golden Globe network; this year, the ceremonies was televised by CBS. In 2019, Crazy Rich Asians was nominated for two awards, but went home empty handed. Yet Sandra Oh was the first actress of Asian descent to be nominated and to win for a Lead Actress in a Drama Series. Before the show, she tweeted a photo of herself and her family with shirts that read: “It’s an honor just to be Asian,” a comment that she repeated during her acceptance speech.
In the past, the best of Jo Koy’s routines have unified disparate ethnic communities. The opening monologue doesn’t need to be perfect, but it does need to be about the nominees and any time you can get real emotions into the banter, that’s surely true gold. Sunday night, Jo Koy may have inadvertently unified the Golden Globe attendees and audience in their negative reaction to his hosting skills and their anxiety about Golden Globes in its new era. Hopefully, the Golden Globes will see better times in the future.
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