Comedian Jo Koy had plenty of critics after his controversial Golden Globes monologue, but Greta Gerwig isn’t one of them.
Gerwig, 40, shared her thoughts on Koy’s Barbie joke during an appearance on BBC Radio 4’s Today after the Sunday, January 7, awards show. Koy, 52, was widely panned for comparing Gerwig’s film to Christoper Nolan‘s Oppenheimer, pointing out that the latter was “based on a 721-page Pulitzer Prize–winning book about the Manhattan Project, and Barbie is on a plastic doll with big boobies.”
While many fans felt the quip was reductive, Gerwig brushed off the comment. “Well, he’s not wrong,” she said on the radio show. “She’s the first doll that was mass-produced with breasts, so he was right on. And you know, I think that so much of the project of the movie was unlikely because it is about a plastic doll.”
Gerwig added, “Barbie by her very construction has no character, no story, she’s there to be projected upon.”
The doll has been a pop culture fixation 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,” Gerwig continued.
Gerwig went on to share “insight” from Barbie creator Ruth Handler, explaining, “She realized, ‘My daughter doesn’t want to pretend to be a mother. She wants to pretend to be a grown woman.'”
Barbie earned nine Golden Globe nominations, the most of any film at this year’s ceremony. It won the first-ever award for Cinematic and Box Office Achievement, which recognized movies that made at least $100 million domestically and $150 million worldwide. Billie Eilish‘s contribution to the Barbie soundtrack, “What Was I Made For?,” took home Best Original Song.
Koy raised eyebrows more than once on Sunday night, leaving viewers at home — and even some stars in the audience — unimpressed with his jokes. As he poked fun at Gerwig’s movie, the camera panned to show her and Barbie costars Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, who didn’t crack a smile.
With many of his jokes falling flat, Koy defended himself on stage. “I got the gig 10 days ago! You want a perfect monologue? Yo, shut up. You’re kidding me, right? Slow down,” he told the audience. “I wrote some of these, and they’re the ones you’re laughing at.”
Along with taking shots at Barbie and name-dropping Robert De Niro, Koy made a swipe at Taylor Swift‘s recent NFL appearances amid her romance with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, teasing, “The big difference between the Golden Globes and the NFL? At the Golden Globes, we have fewer camera shots of Taylor Swift. I swear.”
Swift, 34, appeared irritated as she took a sip of her drink, and Koy later admitted that it was a “weird joke.”
“It was more on the NFL,” he said on GMA3: What You Need to Know one day after the ceremony. “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.”
