Jo Koy Responds to Taylor Swift Joke Backlash, “I Didn’t Understand the Taylor Tiff”

Amidst the online consensus that Jo Koy’s (Jo Koy: Comin’ In Hot)  hosting gig at the Golden Globes was a hot mess, Koy himself doesn’t seem to agree with that. In a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times, he sat down and explained what exactly was going on that led up to some ill-received jokes, some off-script rambling, and a ton of backlash. Given that he got the gig of hosting only 10 days prior to the award show, he believes that he did a good job with what he was given.

In the interview with the LA Times, he talks about the high-pressure circumstances that he dealt with prior to going live on air. He also explained that his writers were not set in stone until 8 days prior to the show. So for two days, he was solo writing his material. 

“I think I did well given the circumstances,” Koy told the LA Times, “We were still writing up until they said we’re live. Absolute cold reads, never got a chance to work out anything. And this is not an excuse, I’m just trying to paint the picture because I don’t think people understand, in any situation, how is that geared towards winning? If you were to write that situation down on a piece of paper and go, ‘Do you want to do this?’ I guarantee everyone would be like ‘No.’ I’m happy I did it because I did accept that challenge.”

When asked about how he would rate himself on how he did, he gave himself quite a high grade purely based on having the guts to host the show at all. He stated, “I’m gonna give myself an A-plus just based on the courage. I’m going to hit it over the head a million times, whoever you can think of in your head that could have done it, I’m telling you right now they said no and I didn’t. I looked at it in a different light. The history of the show is 81 years. That’s 81 hosts and some repeated. I’m the first Asian to ever solo host. It’s 2024, I’m the first out of 81 years. Sandra Oh was the first co-host, but I was the first solo host. Imagine if someone said yes before me, we’d still be at the 82nd Golden Globes and still no Asian as a solo host, so if I didn’t say yes, there still would never have been.”

One aspect in particular that people are eager to hear about is his response to the reaction of Taylor Swift (New Girl, Miss Americana) and plenty of her fans to one of his jokes that centered around Swift and her NFL boyfriend Travis Kelce.

In his response to the backlash, Koy said, “I didn’t understand the Taylor tiff, mind you, that one was just getting rewritten 50 million times, never ran it through, all the way up until we had to walk out. It’s just weird, where do you place it, and we kept hammering it and cutting it down. But the whole intention of that joke was to make fun of the NFL. It’s like, the cool thing about the Globes is we don’t need to do cutaways for ratings. What hurts the most is me just supporting Taylor, I support her, I love her work. I got nieces that I bought tickets for. There’s no ill intent in that joke. The joke is about the NFL and how they keep using cutaways to her.” 

He then goes on, “I’m not saying anything that no one’s saying,and it’s obvious what that joke was. It’s about the NFL. It’s like out of everything that has happened this is the one you choose to go after. I didn’t understand why because it was fun when I walked out. Robert De Niro was dying, like, and I’m looking at him and his wife was smacking his back and smiling and laughing and he was laughing. And when I did the whole thing about him being 80 he loved it. And that was fun. I was like, man, this guy’s so much fun. And then I did that [Swift] joke and I’m like, what just happened?”

The Golden Globes ratings were up 50% than last year’s awards bringing in 9.4 million viewers, making it the most watched in years. Succession brought home the largest amount of awards including Best Drama Series.

Anna Phillips: Anna Phillips is a senior dramatic writing Corcoran Scholar at George Washington University. She is a writer, actor, and journalist. She is born and raised in Fair Haven, New Jersey- the proud home of Bruce Springsteen. Now, she lives in Washington DC where she writes, finishes her studies, and runs the comedy group receSs as president and head writer. Her favorite movie is Dazed and Confused, her favorite TV shows are HunterxHunter and Ted Lasso and her favorite song is Chinatown by Bleachers. She is currently developing a short film for her senior thesis! Ask her about it when you see her!
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