Jo Koy knows all too well that Taylor Swift didn't appear to be amused when he made a joke about her at the 2024 Golden Globes. But he doesn't seem to be too fazed by her reaction, as well as the tepid response from others.
“The big difference between the Golden Globes and the NFL? At the Golden Globes, we have fewer camera shots of Taylor Swift,” he said during the show, alluding to the "Cruel Summer" singer attending boyfriend Travis Kelce's games this season with the Kansas City Chiefs.
After hearing the joke, Swift made a face before taking a sip of her drink. The moment was captured during the broadcast and went viral.
"I didn’t understand the Taylor (Swift) tiff," the comedian told the Los Angeles Times. "Mind you, that one was just getting rewritten 50 million times, never ran it through, all the way up until we had to walk out. It’s just weird, where do you place it, and and we kept hammering it and cutting it down."
Koy said he wasn't even picking on Swift.
"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. The joke is about the NFL and how they keep using cutaways to (her)," he said.
"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."
When previously asked about his joke and Swift's subsequent reaction, Koy, 52, played it cool.
“Aww, man, it was cute. I was just saying it was cute,” he said, speaking to "Entertainment Tonight" at Billboard’s Golden Globes after-party. “I was just saying it’s less cutaways, that’s all.”
Koy's monologue as host drew a palpably lackluster response, to the point that he called out the show's writers while performing.
“Some I wrote, some other people wrote,” Koy said about the jokes.
“Yo, I got the gig 10 days ago. You want a perfect monologue?” he continued. “Shut up. You’re kidding me, right? I wrote some of these, and they’re the ones you’re laughing at.”
Swift attended the ceremony, wearing a sleek, shimmery green gown, because her “Eras Tour” movie was nominated in the new category of cinematic and box office achievement. The movie lost to “Barbie.”
The "Shake It Off" singer has, of late, been shaking off commentary about her attendance at NFL games. The singer recently said she's only focused on cheering on Kelce when she attends his games, not on her reception at the games.
“I don’t know how they know what suite I’m in,” she said during an interview with Time magazine. “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.”
But she knows some football fans would prefer if the NFL would focus more on the game than Swift's presence when she is in attendance.
“I’m just there to support Travis,” she added. “I have no awareness of if I’m being shown too much and pissing off a few dads, Brads, and Chads.”
In December, the star attended a match between the Kansas City Chiefs and the New England Patriots and was booed during the game when she appeared on the jumbotron. Swift seemed to shake it off and blew a kiss to the crowd.
Her beau later addressed fans' positive, and negative, reactions to her during the game on an episode of the podcast he co-hosts with his brother, Jason Kelce.
“They showed Taylor at the game, and you don’t see an entire home team fan base go insane for somebody wearing the opposite team’s colors,” he said. “It just shows you how amazing that girl is. They went absolutely insane when they showed her on the screen.”
“There might’ve been a few Brads and Chads that were booing, but for the most part everybody was screaming their f----- tail off for her,” he said.