Chelsea Handler makes subtle joke about ex Jo Koy at Critics Choice Awards
Comedian Chelsea Handler made a dig at her ex-boyfriend Jo Koy as she delivered her opening monologue at the 29th Critics Choice Awards.
The awards night, happening on Jan. 15 (Philippine time), is taking place at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, California. In her speech, Handler joked about being attracted to director Martin Scorsese.
"Unfortunately, Martin Scorsese isn't here tonight, but that's not going to stop me from letting everyone know that I would toss him around like a little Italian meatball," she said.
Responding to the audience and taking a jab at her ex, Handler added, "Thank you for laughing at that, my writers wrote it." This hit at Jo Koy earned applause from the audience.
Handler's quip was a reference to Jo Koy throwing his writers under the bus as his jokes bombed during his opening monologue at the 81st Golden Globes.
"Yo, I got the gig 10 days ago. You want a perfect monologue? Shut up! You're kidding me, right? Slow down. I wrote some of these, and they're the ones you're laughing at," the Fil-Am comedian said during the Globes show.
Since his Golden Globes performance, Jo Koy has acknowledged that the awards night had a tough crowd and that his jokes fell flat. He has also poked fun at the incident during his regular stand-up set, calling the Golden Globes crowd "marshmallows."
Handler and Jo Koy made their relationship Instagram official in September 2021 and announced their breakup in July 2022. In an interview with Brooke Shields, Handler said she thought the Fil-Am comedian was "the one" but towards the end, it turned out he wasn't her "person."
"There were just some behaviors that we couldn't agree on... It felt to me like I would have to abandon myself, which maybe I would have been okay to do if I were 20 or 25, but I wasn't willing to do that. No matter how much I loved this person—and I loved him so much—I wasn't going to abandon myself," she said.
Meanwhile, Jo Koy said he had "nothing but best love" for his ex a year after their split, sharing that they were still friends.