Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

A Jew And An Asian Host The Golden Globes. The Joke: They Are Kind And Love Their Moms.

Marjorie Marrow and Young-nam Oh must be the proudest mothers on the planet tonight.

In a plunging red gown with structured shoulders, Sandra Oh took the stage at the Beverly Hilton alongside co-host Andy Samberg. It’s a historic night sub-category: award show hosting — Samberg and Oh are the first Jewish and Asian performers to co-host a major awards show.

It’s a watershed moment worthy of celebration. It’s also a demonstration of how constricted opportunities for diversity can be: one man, one woman. One racial minority, one religious minority. Both have decades of Hollywood credits under their belts (and Oh has an extra decade on Samberg.) Both representatives from groups that America has coded “model minorities.”

Well, what can we say — the day is short, the work is much, the workers are lazy, and the rewards are great. On Sunday night, Oh and Samberg seized their hosting roles as an opportunity to prod those workers into shape. “Some of you may be wondering why the two of us are hosting together,” Oh began. Samberg added that they are the only two people who haven’t offended anyone yet — not that both have minority statuses that are unlikely to alienate.

“Now we know what you guys are thinking — Andy Samberg and Sandra Oh, the two nicest people in Hollywood? This is gonna be a snooze!” Samberg said, threatening to “roast” them all, “Ricky Gervais-style.”

“Bradley Cooper,” Oh hissed, as the camera panned to the fearful-looking “A Star Is Born” creator. “You are hot,” Oh said.

“Jeff Bridges. Mr Cecil B Demile award himself,” Samberg purred. “Hey Jeff! I wish you were my dad.”

The painfully-relatable parenting jokes continued: “Crazy Rich Asians!” Oh crowed. “It is the first studio movie with an Asian American lead since ‘Ghost In A Shell’ and ‘Aloha.’” Joking that Asian moms were hardly impressed by the massive firsts achieved by the movie, Oh directed the cameras to pan to her mother. Mrs. Oh was, indeed, smiling primly. Oh went on to joke about the “Asian flush,” a concept Sandberg wasn’t familiar with.

“Don’t worry,” said Oh. “That joke’s not for you.”

via GIPHY

Samberg had his tribe’s back, too. “If you’ve got some antacid out, you might as well send it to the ‘Kominsky Method’ table,” he said, going on to refer to the much-nominated “Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” as, “the show that makes audiences sit up and say, ‘Wait is this anti-Semitic?’” (This Jewish writer, at least, often reaches for proton pump-inhibitors during “Maisel.”)

After a joke about white-washing that deftly skewered Samberg’s white, male privilege (without erasing his Jewish identity! It can be done!), Oh delivered a barn burning monologue:

“I said yes to the fear of being on this stage tonight because I wanted to be here tonight to look out into this audience to witness this moment of change. And I’m not fooling myself — next year could be different, but this moment is real. Because I see you. And I see you. All these faces of change. And now, so will everyone else.”

Later in the evening, at the point where hosts might cheekily hand out pizzas or drop candy from the ceiling to divert their audience, Oh and Samberg brought out a troupe of licensed nurses to give out flu shots.

Jenny Singer is the deputy lifestyle editor for the Forward. You can reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter @jeanvaljenny

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.