Ricky Gervais’s epic opening monologue

In his fifth and final time hosting the Golden Globes, Ricky Gervais delivered a hilariously honest opening monologue that took aim at Hollywood in its entirety. Gervais made it known to his audience that this would be his final time hosting these awards and that he really didn’t care anymore, and that became quite evident throughout the duration of his speech.

Before really letting loose towards the end of his speech, Gervais took some individual, humorous jabs at Felicity Huffman, Joe Pesci, Martin Scorsese, and Leonardo DiCaprio among others, which were met with genuine laughter from the majority of the audience (except for Tom Hanks, whose reaction to Gervais’ Felicity Huffman joke can be seen below).

Tom Hanks exhibiting striking similarities to shocked Pikachu. Via Fox News

 

After having some fun at the audience’s expense as promised, Gervais turned up the heat in Beverly Hills. Gervais used Apple, with CEO Tim Cook seated in the audience, as an example to highlight Hollywood’s inner avarice and immorality behind its façade of political correctness: “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. Well, you say you’re woke but the companies you work for in China — unbelievable. Apple, Amazon, Disney. If ISIS started a streaming service you’d call your agent, wouldn’t you?” Following this “joke” that is hinged entirely on truthfulness, the discomfort in the room of The Beverly Hilton hotel is palpable through your phone screen and the forced laughter from the crowd is hardly audible.

Gervais ended his opening speech by attempting to disabuse the room full of millionaires of their belief that they have even the slightest clue what the real world is like: “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.” He then capped off his message with a closing line that I will not detail in this article but elicited the following reaction from Tom Hanks:

I can’t quite pinpoint what emotion this expression conveys. Via eonline.com

However, the average non-millionaire celebrity probably found Gervais’s monologue to be refreshing and enjoyed seeing a room full of people who are disconnected from the real world being told that they are, in fact, disconnected from the real world.