Comedian Marc Maron came to fellow comic Jo Koy’s defense during his WTF podcast amid backlash from audiences over Koy’s Golden Globes opening monologue.
As Breitbart News reported, social media lit up on Sunday in response to Koy’s opening monologue, with some calling it the worst they’ve ever seen. While Koy’s opening monologue kicked off to a fairly traditional start, his jokes noticeably took a downturn with the live audience when he took a jab at the blockbuster Barbie.
“Oppenheimer and Barbie are competing for cinematic box office achievement,” Koy said. “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.”
The joke received some boos and jeers amid some laughs. In fairness, Barbie director and co-screenwriter Greta Gerwig seemed to jive with it.
“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,’” he continued.
When the joke attracted some groans, Koy blamed his writers.
“Some I wrote, some other people wrote,” he said. “Yo, I got the gig ten days ago! 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.”
Maron said that Koy did not deserve the backlash, adding that the Globes “don’t fuckin’ matter much anyway.”
“So the Jo Koy thing — now look, I’m coming at this as a comic and I’m no stranger to enjoying schadenfreude, but this guy didn’t deserve it,” Maron said. “It doesn’t matter when he took the gig or how soon he got the gig to host the Globes — and honestly, the Globes are a sham, they don’t f–kin’ matter much anyways.”
Maron added that Koy stepped into host because “literally nobody” wanted the job, lamenting he took a “ridiculous amount of shit … for a show that stinks, for a show that is really an invalid judge of anything anymore and has had its own problems.”
“So Jo Koy takes this gig, and it’s a nice paying gig, and he’s a comic. He’s seasoned. He knows what the fuck he’s doing. But nobody really knows who Jo Koy is,” Maron said. “He does fine out there. He’s a big comic, sells a lot of tickets, has a community around him, the Asian community as well and has been successful for many years, but [he’s] not a household name. I would say most people don’t know who he is. So right away that’s jarring.”
Maron felt that the bad reception of Koy stemmed from his lack of name recognition.
“I think the primary issue with Jo was that not enough people knew who he was,” Maron said. “So they decided to f–king shit on him. ‘Who is this guy? Why him?’ Well, he’s completely capable of the job.”
For his part, Jo Koy has refused to apologize for anything.
Jo Koy defends himself against backlash on his Barbie “plastic doll with big boobies” joke at the Golden Globes.
— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) January 11, 2024
“If you’ve ever seen me, you’ll see how much I praise and shine light on women, from my ex-wife to my mom.” pic.twitter.com/nDy5POa8tK
Paul Roland Bois directed the award-winning feature film, EXEMPLUM, which can be viewed for FREE on YouTube or Tubi. “Better than Killers of the Flower Moon,” wrote Mark Judge. “You haven’t seen a story like this before,” wrote Christian Toto. A high-quality, ad-free stream can also be purchased on Google Play or Vimeo on Demand. Follow him on Twitter @prolandfilms or Instagram @prolandfilms.
