The press meets 2024 Golden Globes host Jo Koy and is suitably impressed

It isn’t that Jo Koy is a total unknown to the masses. He’s had a thriving stand-up comedy career for years, including four Netflix specials. He starred in the Universal film “Easter Sunday.” He worked on Chelsea Handler’s late-night talk show “Chelsea Lately” for years and dated the host exclusively for nearly a year. But when the 52-year-old was announced as the host of Sunday’s 81st Annual Golden Globe Awards, there was a lot of “Jo Who?” But the fact he’s had basically two weeks to pull everything together – a gig that typically takes months to prep – means he hasn’t had time to worry about stuff like being in the hot glare of this major awards show spotlight for the first time.

As Koy met the media on a blustery Thursday morning during a red carpet rollout and press preview at the Beverly Hilton, he also didn’t seem like a man preparing to be hoisted onto a spit. In fact, quite the opposite. As I greeted him in the press line, I stuck out my hand to shake his – but he pushed it aside and wrapped me in a massive hug instead, Mind you, I’d never met the man before, and the warm reception evoked a guy who wasn’t at all nervous about what he was about to encounter in a ballroom filled with A-listers. In point of fact, he’s clearly loving it.

“Who wouldn’t be happy to do this?” Koy replied to my surprise at the ease with which he was handling everything. “You’re pretending if you’re not.”

The thing is, hosting the Golden Globes seems automatically to make you a lightning rod for criticism and controversy. Ricky Gervais was annually slammed for going after Hollywood and its inhabitants with too much rancorous gusto. Tiny Fey and Amy Poehler, Seth Meyers and (last year) Jerrod Carmichael all had their detractors after hosting. When you take this gig, you put a great big target on your back.

‘That’s what was so entertaining about the Globes, that it was just a relaxed format,” he believes. “You know what I mean? It wasn’t stiff. It’s like, OK, they’re having fun, they’re drinking, they’re eating. As a viewer, it felt like you were looking through a window watching people have fun. And I want that. I want viewers to be happy and it’s my job to make sure they’re having fun watching it.”

Not so long ago, Koy continues, no one was having fun. “There was a line of picket signs and I didn’t like seeing that,” he says. “I’m happy that we’re back. I had writer friends who were struggling. I had actor friends who weren’t getting jobs. So come on, man. Let’s celebrate!”

It wasn’t that Koy was necessarily surprised to get the Globes. He thought he’d paid his dues and earned this opportunity. But as he stood talking to me, he had been hired precisely two weeks before – on December 21. “Who in their right mind would want to write jokes just days before a show?” he asks. “You know what I mean? That’s the kind of pressure we’ve been under. I mean, I have a great team of writers, but it’s been just nonstop hour after hour after hour, crafting jokes and bits and getting ready. A lot of hosts get six months to prepare. We got two weeks.”

And what if people can tell the show was rushed together?

“Who cares if it does? We’re gonna be in a beautiful room, having a great time. Let’s go.”

For their part, the showrunner/executive producers of the Globes, Glenn Weiss and Ricky Kirshner, claim to be utterly nonplussed about the rapidity with which everything has had to come together – CBS and Paramount+ signing on as broadcast partners on November 17, Koy coming onboard on December 21, the show airing on January 7.

When it’s suggested to them that it looked for a moment like maybe they weren’t going to get a network or a host for the show in time, Weiss said, “It looked like that to you maybe. We always knew it was going to be OK. What people see on the air on January 7 is what the plan was. Let’s just say that it took a lot of discussion and back and forth to get to the final place.”

And both Kirshner and Weiss are confident they found the right human to host.

“Jo is so enthusiastic,” Kirshner observes. “And honestly, that was the big appeal for us. Number one, he’s funny. That’s natural. He’s a comedian. But then number two, especially when we started talking to him, the enthusiasm is real. He’s all in. And that made a really big difference to us, having somebody who not only wants to be there but is thrilled to be. He is that guy.”

To be sure, Koy has tossed every ounce of himself into getting this thing right. He says he’s been doing his homework, binge-watching nominated movies and TV shows between meeting with his writers. He doesn’t seem during an interview to have an agenda or any evident snark, noting, “We’re going to poke fun, but we’ll do it in a way where we’re still celebrating.” In other words, he won’t be taking potshots for the sake of making him look comfortably above the fray. In fact, he’s happy being the fray itself.

Once our brief interview was done and Koy prepared to happily move on to the next reporter, I again instinctively stuck out my hand – and again, he ignored it, moving in for a second major hug. This time he punctuated it by saying, “I love you.” But it didn’t come across as creepy or weird. Instead, it felt incredibly sweet and genuine. You don’t see this kind of unguarded charm and vulnerability in Hollywood types very often.

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