Chelsea Handler Takes Aim at Ex Jo Koy During Critics Choice Awards Opening Monologue

Chelsea Handler didn't miss an opportunity to take aim at her ex Jo Koy — one week after his jokes didn't sit well with celebrities and viewers at the 2024 Golden Globes.

In her opening monologue, the blonde beauty, 48, began by talking about how attracted she is 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," Handler said. "Thank you for laughing at that — my writers wrote it."

The not-so-subtle dig, which got a round of applause, referred to Koy's remarks in which he blamed his writers for the jokes that seemingly bombed.

"Yo, I got the gig 10 days ago! You want a perfect monologue? Shut up! You are kidding me, right? Slow down," Koy told the audience on Sunday, January 7. "I wrote some of these and they're the ones you're laughing at."

During Koy's monologue, he went after Taylor Swift, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry and Robert DeNiro, but most of the crowd didn't get his banter.

After the hosting gig and fallout, Koy did his first stand-up gig in St. Louis, where he told the audience,  “Lot a marshmallows, man. They’re delicious, but godd---, they’re soft. I just come from a different time. I see the changes that are happening. I get it, but godd---, can we f------- laugh at ourselves?”

Koy continued, “I got a feeling none of you motherf-------- watched it, and I’m kinda happy. Oh my god. It feels good to live in this country. We get to say what we want to say. Don’t be apologetic about it at all. Be able to…speak your mind.”

Koy also later addressed how he didn't mean to put Swift, 34, down during his playful bit.

"I didn’t understand the Taylor [Swift] tiff. Mind you, that one was just getting rewritten 50 million times, never ran it through, all the way up until we had to walk out. It’s just weird, where do you place it, and and we kept hammering it and cutting it down," Koy admitted in an interview with the Los Angeles Times published Thursday, January 11.

"But the whole intention of that joke was to make fun of the NFL. It’s like, the cool thing about the [Golden] Globes is we don’t need to do cutaways for ratings," Koy added.

Koy told the crowd, "The big difference between the Golden Globes and the NFL? At the Golden Globes, we have fewer camera shots of Taylor Swift." When the camera panned to the pop star, she didn't even give a smile or smirk.

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"What hurts the most is me just supporting Taylor, I support her, I love her work," Koy noted. "There’s no ill intent in that joke. The joke is about the NFL and how they keep using cutaways to [her]. And it’s an obvious reason why."