Jo Koy made waves during the 2024 Golden Globes when he poked fun at Taylor Swift and her connection to the NFL — but he insists he wasn’t trying to be mean.
“The big difference between the Golden Globes and the NFL? At the Golden Globes, we have fewer camera shots of Taylor Swift. I swear,” Koy, 52, said during the Sunday, January 7, broadcast, referring to Swift, 34, being shown on TV constantly during her boyfriend Travis Kelce’s football games. “Sorry about that,” he quickly added after silence overtook the audience.
The first-time Golden Globes host had several jokes fall flat during his opening monologue, but when Koy name dropped Swift, 34, her reaction instantly went viral. When the camera panned to the musician, she appeared to be unamused and took a sip of her champagne while keeping a straight face.
Swift previously addressed the NFL’s choice to consistently show her on TV when she attends Kelce’s Kansas City Chiefs games, telling TIME in December 2023, “There’s a camera, like, a half-mile away, and you don’t know where it is, and you have no idea when the camera is putting you in the broadcast, so I don’t know if I’m being shown 17 times or once.”
The “Bad Blood’ singer added: “I’m just there to support Travis. I have no awareness of if I’m being shown too much and pissing off a few dads, Brads, and Chads.”
Scroll down to see what Koy has said about the now-viral misstep:
He Was Just Being ‘Cute’
Koy claimed to Entertainment Tonight on Sunday that the joke was made in jest. “Aww, man, it was cute. I was just saying it was cute,” he insisted when told about Swift’s reaction. “I was just saying it’s less cutaways, that’s all.”
Was It a Form of Flattery?
“It was a compliment,” Koy told Extra after the awards show, explaining that he meant Swift “could be more intimate tonight, that’s all.”
Does He Feel Bad About It?
During his appearance on the Monday, January 8, episode of GMA3: What You Need to Know, Koy pointed to his Swift joke as the Globes moment he felt bad about. “I think it was when the Taylor one was just a little flat,” he recalled. “It was a weird joke, I guess.”
Koy argued, “It was more on the NFL. I was trying to make fun of the NFL using cutaways and how the Globes didn’t have to do that. So it was more of a jab toward the NFL. But it just didn’t come out that way.”
He’s Actually a Swiftie
Several days later, Koy confessed that he still didn’t understand why his joke about Swift caused so much controversy. He admitted in a January 11 interview with the Los Angeles Times that he considers himself to be a big fan of the Grammy winner.
“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,” he explained to the outlet. “The joke is about the NFL and how they keep using cutaways to [her]. And it’s an obvious reason why. 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.”
