20 Controversial Award Show Jokes That Weren't Afraid To Stir The Pot

A frequently controversial Golden Globes host, Ricky Gervais went after everyone in the room during his fifth (and as of this writing, final) time hosting in 2020:

Apple roared into the TV game with The Morning Show, a superb drama about the importance of dignity and doing the right thing, made by a company that runs sweatshops in China… 

You say you’re woke, but the companies you work for [run sweatshops] in China - unbelievable. Apple, Amazon, Disney. If ISIS started a streaming service, you’d call your agent, wouldn’t you? 

So if you do win an award tonight, don’t use it as a platform to make a political speech. You’re in no position to lecture the public, about anything. You know nothing about the real world. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg. So, if you win, come up, accept your little award, thank your agent and your god, and f*ck off.

At the 2020 Golden Globes, oft-controversial host Ricky Gervais morphed a joke about streaming platforms into one about a much darker, yet still topical subject:

Nobody cares about movies anymore. No one goes to the cinema; no one really watches network TV. Everyone’s watching Netflix. This show should just be me coming out going, “Well done, Netflix. You win - everything.” 

But no, we’ve got to drag it out for three hours. You could binge-watch the entire first season of After Life instead of watching this show. That’s a show about a man who wants to kill himself because his wife dies of cancer, and it’s still more fun than this. Spoiler alert: Season 2 is on the way, so in the end, he obviously didn’t kill himself. Just like Jeffrey Epstein. I know he’s your friend. But I don’t care.

At the 2023 Golden Globes, host Jerrod Carmichael appeared on stage with three awards in his hand and stated:

Hey guys, backstage I found these three Golden Globe awards that Tom Cruise returned. Look, I’m just the host briefly or whatever but I have a pitch. I think maybe we take these three things and exchange them for the safe return of Shelly Miscavige?

Cruise, a known Scientologist, returned his Golden Globes in response to the 2021 controversy over the lack of diversity in the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Shelly Miscavige is the wife of Scientology leader David Miscavige; she hasn't been seen publicly since 2007.

While hosting the 2016 #OscarsSoWhite, Chris Rock made several jokes about the surrounding controversy, one of which seems ahead of its time after the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests:

This year things are gonna be a little different at the Oscars. This year in the “In Memoriam” package, it’s just gonna be Black people that were shot by the cops on their way to the movies.

Never one to shy away from a dark topic, at the 2016 Golden Globes, host Ricky Gervais cracked about Caitlyn Jenner:

What a year she’s had. She became a role model for trans people everywhere, showing great bravery in breaking down barriers and destroying stereotypes. She didn’t do a lot for women drivers, but you can’t have everything, can you?

Jenner was in a February 2015 car accident that killed a passenger in a vehicle she rear-ended.

While hosting the 1998 ESPYs, the late Norm Macdonald slipped in this punchline while discussing the remarkable year of footballer Charles Woodson:

And there’s Charles Woodson, how 'bout that? What a season he had. He became the first defensive player to win a Heisman trophy, congratulations Charles. That is something that no one can ever take away from you. Unless you kill your wife and a waiter, in which case, all bets are off.

He would often sneak O.J. Simpson jokes onto the Weekend Update segment of Saturday Night Live, much to the ire of NBC head Don Ohlmeyer, a former friend of Simpson. Macdonald was fired from SNL in 1998.