Whoopi Goldberg has defended Jo Koy after backlash over his Golden Globes 2024 performance.
The 52-year-old comedian has been criticised for his stint as host of the prestigious ceremony on Sunday night (January 7), but the 68-year-old star has offered her sympathy after hosting the Academy Awards four times between 1994 and 2002.
Describing the hosting gigs as "brutal", she said on The View: "If you don't know the room, if you've not been in these rooms before and you're sort of thrust out there. It's hit or miss.
"Now I love Jo Koy. He, to me, makes me just crazy because he's funny. I don't know whether it was the room. I don't know whether it was the jokes.
"I didn't get to see it. But I do know that he is as good as it gets when it comes to standups. That is not an easy game."
Whoopi reflected on her own experiences, insisting it's "not an easy gig" for anyone to take on.
She laughed: "If you read any of the reviews of some the gigs that I've had where they've just you know, whisked me into the cornfield to die on the vine. I mean, it's not an easy gig."
Her The View co-star Sara Haines admitted she was "nervous for him", while their fellow host Alyssa Farah Griffin praised her as "one [of her] favourite guests' on the programme.
She suggested: "I think that he's such an inherently nice person that doing more of a roast is not natural for him."
After the ceremony, Jo told People magazine he'd "love to" host again, although he'd want "five months" to prepare, having only been announced for the job on December 21.
During his opening monologue, he went off script and ranted: "Yo, I got this 10 days ago.
"You want a perfect monologue? Yo, shut up. You're kidding me. Right? Slow down. I wrote some of these and they're the ones you're laughing at."
Moments earlier, he took a jab at Oppenheimer and Barbie, which both won awards later in the show, although the joke didn't land with the audience in the room.
He quipped: "Oppenheimer is based on a 721-page, Pulitzer Prize-winning book about the Manhattan Project. And Barbie is based on a plastic doll with big boobies."