Jo Koy says it was a 'rookie move' to blame his writers for panned Golden Globes jokes

Jo Koy says he did not intend to throw his writers under the bus during his much-maligned Golden Globes 2024 monologue.

"I love my writers," the host and comedian said in a new postmortem interview with the Los Angeles Times. "I love all three of them and I shouted them out. And I told them, like, that was a moment right there where I’m just grasping. I love them and I can’t stop talking about them in every interview. They busted their ass, man."

"There’s a lot of greats that make rookie moves," Koy continued, "and that was a rookie move. Those writers are dope, and that was not my intention at all. They were amazing, they had my back, and I need to make sure I fix that, and I will, I always will."

Koy chalked up his crash-and-burn performance at the ceremony to time issues, explaining that writers were not assembled until eight days before the Jan. 7 telecast and that they only entered the writers' room two days before.

"It’s so crazy because the day before, we were all sitting right here," he said. "It was the first time we all met in person, the day before we had to turn in that monologue. One time, that’s all we had. It was the most insane thing."

He added, "I went up on my stage [here at my office] and just verbally ran through it. But I was running it through [our group, so] of course we’re gonna laugh at it. It’s honest feedback for us, but I didn’t get to run it on stage anywhere. I didn’t get to go anywhere where I could just sneak these things in, and that’s what this is all about — it’s working things out."

Koy's widely panned Globes monologue included a comparison of Barry Keoghan's penis in Saltburn to Bradley Cooper's prosthetic nose in Maestro, as well as a Barbenheimer joke referring to Barbie as a movie about a "plastic doll with big boobies."

After the jokes fell flat, the comedian defended himself on stage. "Yo, I got the gig 10 days ago," he said. "You want a perfect monologue? Yo, shut up. Slow down. I wrote some of these and they're the ones you're laughing at."

Despite audiences' mixed reception, Koy said he'd love to host the ceremony again — but "with five months, not nine days" to prepare.

The crowd was "great" overall, he told PEOPLE, adding that the best part of the night was his walking on stage to begin his hosting gig. "I was like, 'Let's just do this. Let's just have fun.'"

Oppenheimer and Succession reigned supreme at this year's Golden Globes ceremony, snagging the most wins, while Lily Gladstone made history as the first Indigenous person to win Best Actress for her role in Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon. Steven Yeun and Ali Wong also had historical wins for their roles in Lee Sung Jin's 2023 road-rage dramedy, Beef, which also won the award for Best Limited Series.

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