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Jo Koy Couldn’t Stay the Course
The joke writing wasn’t the only reason his Golden Globes hosting gig fell flat.
As Andy Samberg noted after co-hosting the show with Sandra Oh in 2019, the room is very “boozy” and notoriously difficult to cull: “At home, I think you can tell it’s loud, but imagine that times ten.” Add to this the status of the attendees and their tendency to err on the side of the self-serious — not to mention the pressure of the massive at-home audience scrutinizing the performance live — and it’s obvious why many prominent comedians have turned downthe gig in recent years. Jerrod Carmichael’s 2023 hosting stint was hardly a universal success, but by establishing a contemplative tone up top and using it to reflect on the ceremony’s return to television — it had briefly been taken off the air because of a diversity scandal at the Hollywood Foreign Press Association — he was able to maintain his gravitas when his jokes didn’t land. He lost his timing, began repeating punch lines (like one about how Succession taught him that billionaires should “pull out”) as if to berate the audience into laughing, and backed away from jokes instead of confidently standing by them.
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