Barbie's Greta Gerwig On Jo Koy's Controversial Golden Globes Joke: 'He's Not Wrong'
Comedian Jo Koy's Golden Globes monologue wasn't particularly popular during the January 7 telecast, but "Barbie" director Greta Gerwig admits that he might have gotten at least one thing right while he was joking about her movie.
After Koy went after Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer" for being too long (and being based on a book that he also thinks is too long), he uttered the following highbrow, elevated joke about Gerwig's "Barbie" film: "Barbie is about a plastic doll with big boobies."
Apparently, Gerwig took his Pulitzer-worthy critique in stride. While speaking to the BBC's Radio 4 program "Today" (per Digital Spy), Gerwig acknowledged that Koy was technically correct. "Well, he's not wrong," Gerwig said. "She's the first doll that was mass produced with breasts, so he was right on."
Still, it's not like Gerwig accepted this incisive comment at face value and simply moved on — she went on to point out that in her film, the character Barbie, played by Margot Robbie, is made from whole cloth, and that crafting a protagonist from the image of a plastic doll wasn't exactly an easy feat.
"And you know, I think that so much of the project of the movie was unlikely because it is about a plastic doll... Barbie, by her very construction, has no character, no story, she's there to be projected upon," the writer-director concluded.
Greta Gerwig knows the history of Barbie — and factored it into her film
In that same interview, Greta Gerwig delved into the history of the Barbie doll itself, large plastic breasts notwithstanding. As she noted, the toy's creator was inspired to create something different after seeing her daughter — Barbara, who ultimately became the namesake for the doll — and her limited toy options.
"The insight that [Barbie creator] Ruth Handler had when she was watching her daughter play with baby dolls, is she realised, 'My daughter doesn't want to pretend to be a mother. She wants to pretend to be a grown woman,'" Gerwig told the radio program. Not only is the director well versed in the history of Barbie, she goes so far as to include Handler in the film, where she's played by Rhea Perlman and acts as a sort of deity towards Margot Robbie's Barbie. At the end of the film, Ruth even helps Barbie become a real woman and transcend her identity as a "perfect" doll.
With all of this in mind, Gerwig told the BBC that the doll's history is what inspired her. "Barbie has been around since 1959... she's been a villain and she's been a hero, but it felt like in a way, even though it's so seemingly superficial, that it was such a rich place to start." Clearly, Gerwig thought the concept of Barbie through quite thoroughly and went well beyond the doll's physique ... no matter what Jo Koy said during his monologue.
The Barbie movie is a lot deeper than anyone expected
Anyone who's seen "Barbie" — which, judging by its box office haul, is a massive number of moviegoers — knows that it goes far beyond any of Barbie's physical attributes ... though her perceived physical decline is what kicks off the narrative. When Margot Robbie's Barbie starts noticing she has cellulite, is generally glitching out, and is experiencing "irrepressible thoughts of death," she seeks counsel from Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon), who tells her that a girl out in the real world is sad while she plays with her. To fix it, Barbie will have to go find that girl and make things right.
What happens next is an introspective, clever, and emotional insight into womanhood as Barbie decides that she wants to be the one who imagines rather than simply an idea of female perfection. Bolstered by an excellent monologue and performance by America Ferrera as Barbie's human bestie, Gloria, Barbie decides to become a human, triumphantly making a journey to see her gynecologist in the film's final moments. (Yes, there's a subplot where Ken briefly installs a patriarchy in Barbie Land, but the main focus rests on Barbie's journey.)
In the same interview, Greta Gerwig commented on the impact the film has made since its July 2023 release, especially in the immediate aftermath of it winning the very first Cinematic and Box Office Achievement Award at the Golden Globes. "It felt very fitting, for all of us, the thing that we wanted most of all was to connect with people and to have people share an experience in the cinemas, in the movie [theaters]," Gerwig said.
Jo Koy faced a ton of backlash over his Golden Globes monologue
Greta Gerwig might have extended a sort of olive branch to Jo Koy after his monologue, but his performance was poorly received as a whole, going well beyond his comments about Barbie's "body." It's important to note that Koy was hired just weeks before the telecast and had far less time to prepare than he'd have liked, but it still feels like he could have done a little better than "'Oppenheimer' is long" and "Barbie has big boobs." The host also took a random swipe at Taylor Swift during his monologue, saying that the Golden Globes cameras wouldn't cut to her as much as NFL cameras do during Kansas City Chiefs games (Swift is dating the team's tight end, Travis Kelce). That went over about as well as anyone would expect.
Most egregiously, while Koy was bombing with his audience during the ceremony, he started blaming his writers, mere months after a historic writer's strike brought Hollywood to a screeching halt. "Yo, shut up!" Koy yelled at the room full of stars after reminding them he barely had any time to get ready for the monologue. "You're kidding me, right? Slow down." From there, it got worse. "I wrote some of these, and they're the ones that you're laughing at," Koy quipped, throwing any writers who worked with him under the bus. Finally, he blamed the audience again, informing them that his jokes were "hilarious."
While Jo Koy probably won't be asked to host any more awards shows going forward, at least Gerwig found it in herself to give him a little bit of credit.