By Nell Geraets
Hosting an awards show can be a thankless job; do well and you’re barely remembered but bomb and audiences won’t let you forget it.
The hosts of this year’s award season are perfect examples of this. Late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel encouraged his audience to both chuckle and reflect at the 96th Academy Awards this week. The public is still determining whether his performance struck all the right notes, but one thing is certain: he’s had a better reception than comedian Jo Koy, who hosted the Golden Globes in January and was panned for his disappointing display.
Hosting award shows isn’t easy. Just ask (from left) Chelsea Handler, Jo Koy, Jimmy Kimmel and Anthony Anderson. How can hosts ensure they’re remembered for the right reasons?Credit: Compiled by Nathan Perri.
Later that month, actor Anthony Anderson delighted his Emmys audience, yet failed to spark conversation after the curtains closed.
So exactly what criteria are they being judged by?
To answer this, we examined this season’s hosts, including Kimmel, Koy, Anderson, David Tennant and Trevor Noah, and found the four ingredients that make a hosting gig successful.
Sprinkle sugar before spice
Stand-up often walks a tightrope, riffing on controversial subjects or roasting recognisable names. But successful stand-up will always incorporate a decent share of praise and positivity.
When hosting the 66th Annual Grammys, South African comedian Trevor Noah charmed his audience with unfaltering optimism.
Before diving into slightly edgier jokes, he expressed gratitude for the opportunity to stand among such talent. And while introducing Taylor Swift, he joked about the singer’s ability to improve the local economy anywhere she goes, combining humour with support. These low-stakes, upbeat jokes convinced the crowd to trust that Noah would treat them with respect.
Conversely, an uncomfortable audience is less receptive to jokes that aim for the jugular. Koy almost immediately dove into quips about the length of Oppenheimer and the fact that he had only watched Beef before being asked to host. Unlike Noah, he alienated himself from the audience and their work rather than creating rapport.
Own your mistakes
One of Koy’s biggest mistakes was that he refused to own them. Once it became apparent his performance was lacklustre, he began scrambling for excuses.
“Yo, I got the gig 10 days ago. Do you want a perfect monologue?” he said. “Yo, shut up. You’re kidding me, right? Slow down. I wrote some of these, and they’re the ones you’re laughing at.”
Instead of excusing his lack of punchlines, he blamed his writers, making him appear cowardly – a largely unfunny trait.
Koy’s ex-partner, Chelsea Handler, hosted the 29th Annual Critics Choice Awards, where she used his inability to admit defeat to her own advantage.
“Thank you for laughing at that. My writers wrote it,” she quipped after joking about her sexual attraction to Martin Scorsese.
Kimmel, who hosted the Oscars for the fourth time on Monday, instead opted for the safer self-deprecating route, saying things like “are we off to a bumpy start?” when certain gags didn’t land. Sometimes, allowing people to laugh at you means they’ll eventually laugh with you.
Let the comedy ebb and flow
Three hours of rapid-fire punchlines sounds exhausting. To avoid this, Anderson, the host of the 75th Primetime Emmys, leaned into his musical talents, performing renditions of theme songs from Good Times, The Facts of Life and Miami Vice.
His jokes were limited – the most memorable being the ongoing bit between Anderson and his mother, who helped pace the acceptance speeches – but they were able to land with the audience instead of getting drowned out by hundreds of competing punchlines. Anderson’s charisma was enough to persuade his audience they need not crack up every second to have a great time.
Though most hosts are comedians, they’re hired to keep the show running, not to perform top-notch stand-up. Kimmel understood this assignment. Perhaps aware his jokes about Christopher Nolan’s “porn addiction” and Madame Web’s wobbly box office performance would fizzle into relative nothingness, he chose to highlight the industry’s below-the-line workers during the actors’ and writers’ strikes.
“We were able to make a deal because of the people who rallied beside us. The people who work behind the scenes: the teamsters [drivers and location supervisors], the lighting crew, sound, camera, gaffers, grips. All the people who refused to cross the picket line,” Kimmel said.
No low blows
Topical jokes and edgy roasts are comedy staples, but they tend to garner more laughter when targeting those who can afford to take a few hits.
At the Globes, Koy delivered a gag about “Barbenheimer” that was steeped in misogyny. “Oppenheimer is based on a 721-page Pulitzer Prize-winning book about the Manhattan Project, and Barbie is on a plastic doll with big boobies.”
The joke was criticised as a cheap shot, designed to reduce a critically acclaimed female-directed film into a sugary, brainless flick.
Gags aimed at those with swathes of power and privilege generally fare better. Tennant, the Scottish actor who led the BAFTAs in February, targeted former US president Donald Trump during his opening monologue.
“Poor Things, [a film] where a child’s brain is put in an adult’s body. Later this year, one of those may even be re-elected president,” Tennant said, eliciting laughter from a crowd that felt comfortable enough to let loose.
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