Golden Globes 2024: After Jo Koy's Controversial "Plastic Doll" Remark, A Reply From Barbie Director Greta Gerwig

Jo Koy's controversial remark about the film received a huge backlash on social media

Comedian-actor Jo Koy's hosting stint at Golden Globes 2024 has garnered headlines, especially with his joke on Barbie. During his opening monologue, Jo Koy tipped his hat to the Barbenheimer phenomenon by jokingly comparing Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer and Gerwig's Barbie, Variety reported. "Oppenheimer is based on the 721-page Pulitzer Prize-winning book about the Manhattan Project - and Barbie is about a plastic doll...," he joked as the audience responded with a muted laugh. His remarks about Barbie did not go down well with many. He received a huge backlash on social media as well. However, Barbie director Greta Gerwig appeared to have a different take on it.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4, she said, "Well, he's (Koy) not wrong." Greta added, "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...The insight that Ruth Handler had when she was watching her daughter play with baby dolls, is she realized, 'My daughter doesn't want to pretend to be a mother. She wants to pretend to be a grown woman.'"

Greta Gerwig's film won the first-ever Golden Globe for cinematic and box office achievement. The box office achievement award was just one of two accolades to Barbie at the 2024 Golden Globes, as Yorgos Lanthimos' Poor Things prevailed in the best motion picture comedy or musical category.