No Trump Jokes at the Golden Globes, Says Host Seth Meyers
Seth Meyers doesn't have time to waste on Donald Trump. The late night host spoke to The Hollywood Reporter on Thursday about his upcoming emcee job for Sunday night's Golden Globe Awards.
If you're expecting a monologue filled with sick Trump burns, á la Jimmy Fallon's Globes monologue last year, don't. Meyers, while happy to take jabs at the President on his own show, said he will most likely be leaving Trump out of the Globes this year.
But nothing is definite. "I'm reserving the right to change my mind," Meyers explained, who has worked in comedy news long enough to know a last-minute tweet could change his script.
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But barring any (new) nuclear threats, Meyers said he has bigger and better things to mock: "Especially this year with everything that's happened in Hollywood, it seems far more important to have the focus there as opposed to anything that's happening in Washington."
The 44-year-old comedian will tackle Hollywood's ongoing conversation regarding sexual harassment and assault, stemming from the October allegations against Harvey Weinstein. And, of course, he also has to work in some jokes about the best film and television of 2017, too. "My first instinct was, 'Oh, this is the worst year to [host],'" Meyers admitted. "And then I had conversations with my wife and with the women on this staff, and we all agreed it's an opportunity to be able to say some things that you wouldn't be able to say in previous years."
Meyers added he relied heavily on his wife, human rights attorney Alexi Ashe, to help him craft jokes around a topic that doesn't always lend itself to joking. (Though Meyers handled the issue fairly well on his late night show.)
"I don't know if I would've wanted to do this without her counsel in talking about it," he said, "and she's a smart enough woman to know that I probably shouldn't have done it without her help."
So, a Golden Globes without any Trump? That would be a drastic change from last year, which featured Meryl Streep's impassioned presidential take-down in her acceptance speech. Supposedly, Trump wants the "Hollywood elite" like Streep to leave him alone, but the Twitter timeline will reveal the truth on Sunday.
"If he tweets that he's disappointed we didn't bring him up, I'd be thrilled," said Meyers. "That would fly in the face of what currently he believes is the problem, which is that we won't stop talking about him."