Comedian Jo Koy had Hollywood stars in stitches with an anti-Prince Harry and Meghan Markle joke at the Golden Globes.
The Filipino-American comedy star didn’t hold back in his debut as host of the annual awards ceremony – a job he acquired just two weeks ago – whose winners included Oppenheimer’s Robert Downey Jr and BEEF stars Ali Wong and Steven Yeun.
After enthusiastically arriving on stage, Koy poked fun at Leonardo DiCaprio, Bradley Cooper and Saltburn actor Barry Keoghan, before setting his sights on Harry and Meghan.
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“Harry and Meghan Markle got paid millions for doing absolutely nothing – and that’s just by Netflix,” he told the crowd, who laughed in response. The camera zoomed in on the streaming service’s CEO, Ted Sarandos, after he cracked the joke. Both Harry and Meghan were not present at the ceremony.
Joy was addressing the Netflix documentary, Harry & Meghan, which was released in December 2022 to mixed reviews, and saw the pair discuss their decision to step back as working members of the royal family.
His jokes come after what is considered to have been a tumultuous year for the former royals who faced several obstacles, both professionally and personally in 2023.
While Harry’s memoir Spare became a bestseller, their other ventures did not prove so successful. After signing a lucrative three-year deal with music streaming platform Spotify in 2020, worth a reported £18m, it was announced less than one year later that their podcast, titled Archetypes, had been dropped.
As part of the deal, the duo planned to host and produce numerous podcasts but Archetypes was not renewed for a second series and their deal was ended – with Spotify’s head of podcast innovation and monetisation Bill Simmons later calling the couple “grifters”.
It also emerged on Tuesday (12 December) the couple’s charity Archewell – named after their four-year-old son Archie and established in 2020 – suffered a donations plunge of nearly £10m in a year.
The Sussexes released their charity’s annual report and a glitzy promotional film showing their good works this year, but it was marred by the dramatic loss.
An income tax return filed in the US has revealed that in 2022 donations had dipped to just over £1.6m – an astonishing plunge of £8.7m on the £10.3m it was gifted in 2021.
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