Steve Martin, Whoopi Goldberg Defend Jo Koy After Disastrous Golden Globes Hosting Gig

With one of the most poorly-received monologues in Golden Globes history, stand-up comic Jo Koy not only knew he was bombing in the moment, but he’s had to endure an onslaught of criticism since — so it must be nice to hear some of the best to ever do it like Whoopi Goldberg and Steve Martin have his back.

Goldberg has hosted four Oscars telecasts and even took the helm of the Tony Awards in 2008. “Hosting gigs are brutal,” she said on The View Tuesday. “If you’ve not been in these rooms before, and you’re sort of thrust out there, it’s hit or miss.”

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She went on to note that she loves Koy and believes he’s funny as a stand-up comic .”I don’t know if it was the room. I don’t know whether the jokes. I didn’t get to see it. But I do know that he is as good as it gets when it comes to stand-up.”

One moment was almost certainly the joke, and we’re not talking about his quip about Taylor Swift getting less screen-time at the Globes than she does on the NFL. That joke fell flat, too, but it didn’t so egregiously miss the entire point.

Taking on the Barbenheimer phenomenon, Koy absolutely missed the mark when he quipped, “Oppenheimer is based on a 721-page Pulitzer Prize-winning book about the Manhattan Project, and Barbie is on a plastic doll with big boobies.”

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He doubled down as if to make it clear the whole thrust of the movie flew so far over his head he didn’t see it pass, adding, “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.”

After these jokes inevitably flopped, Koy started blaming how short a span of time he had to prepare his set and even threw his additional writers under the bus, saying the jokes he wrote are the ones the audience was laughing at.

It’s never easy to try and hold a room when you’re bombing, and when it’s the monologue of a long show you have to host the whole way through, it’s hard to imagine how stressful that moment must have been.

Martin, who’s hosted three Academy Award ceremonies himself, took to Threads with words of encouragement for Koy’s tough night. “I tip my hat to anyone who steps out on stage to host a live awards show. It’s a very difficult job and not for the squeamish,” he wrote. “I know because I’m still throwing up from the last time I did it in 2010.”

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“So, Congratulations to Jo Koy, who took on the toughest gig in show business, hit, missed, was light on his feet, and now has twenty minutes of new material for his stand up!” Martin continued.

As for Koy himself, he deconstructed his tough night on GMA3 Monday morning. “I’d be lying if it doesn’t hurt,” he said of the reaction. “I hit a little moment there where I was just like, ‘Ah.’ Hosting is a tough gig. Yes, I am a stand-up comic, but that hosting position is a different style. It’s not the same style.”

He also backed down a bit on throwing the other writers under the bus during the monologue. “So I kind of went in and did the whole writers thing; we were all in that room together. We just had 10 days to try and write something for this monologue,” he explained. “It was a crash course. I feel bad, but I gotta say that I still loved what I did.”

Check out all the highlights from the show here.