'He's not wrong': 'Barbie' director Greta Gerwig reacts to Jo Koy's 'plastic doll with big boobies' joke
Barbie director Greta Gerwig shared her reaction to Filipino-American comedian Jo Koy’s “plastic doll with big boobies” joke about her movie during his Golden Globe Awards opening monologue.
“Well, he’s not wrong,” Gerwig told BBC Radio 4 Today. “She’s the first doll that was mass-produced with breasts, so he was right on.”
Gerwig added that she thinks much of the project was about what its creator Ruth Handler realized while watching her daughter play with baby dolls.
“And you know, I think that so much of the project, of the movie was unlikely because it is about a plastic doll. Barbie by her very construction has no character, no story, she’s there to be projected upon,” she said.
“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,’” she continued.
During the show, Jo Koy compared Oppenheimer and Barbie, saying the former was based on the 721-page Pulitzer Prize-winning book about the Manhattan Project and the latter “about a plastic doll with big boobies.”
“The key moment in Barbie is when she goes from perfect beauty to bad breath, cellulite and flat feet—or what casting directors call, character actor,” Jo Koy added, much to the crowd's dismay. This prompted him to say he “got the gig 10 days ago,” and that some writers were responsible for the material.
Jo Koy’s opening monologue drew mixed reactions from celebrities and viewers. He has acknowledged the criticisms he has received so far.
The 81st Golden Globe Awards were held on Monday, Jan. 8 (Philippine time) in Los Angeles, California. It recognized the best films and TV series from the past year, with Oppenheimer and Succession as the big winners of the night.
Barbie, the highest-grossing movie of 2023, won the first-ever Golden Globe for cinematic and box office achievement.
