Sixteen years later, I got to relive that “Tonight Show” episode from Jo Koy’s perspective. I had a feeling I’d be seeing more of him in the future. Even during Leno’s “Tonight Show” reign, the invite to the couch was an honor saved only for stand-up comics who did really, really well. It may have been Leno and not Carson who invited Jo Koy to the couch that night, but that was still a huge moment. Carl Reiner compared it to being blessed by the pope The New York Times called it “the grail of Carson compliments.” It’s a tradition that started back when Johnny Carson was still hosting it. Being invited to sit on that show’s couch after doing your stand-up is a very big deal. He was killing it.Īt the end of his quick set, as the applause went on and on, Leno invited Jo Koy to the couch. Then he launched into his orange chicken joke, which had them hollering in laughter. You guys are looking at me like, ‘What flavor is that?’” Jo Koy laughed and clapped and kicked off his set by telling the studio audience, “OK, I am Asian so stop looking at me like a Math problem.

I spotted the Philippine flag sewn onto his jacket. He walked on stage, this bald guy rubbing his hands together in excitement. The first time I saw Jo Koy was while watching “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” on cable in 2005. He had another show scheduled in Cebu in two days. 15, 2020, and just four days before, he did two back-to-back shows at Solaire-the live taping of “Jo Koy: In His Elements,” his third Netflix special. Not that he didn’t have enough time on stage that week. “I don’t want to leave,” the comedian told the happy crowd at SM Mall of Asia Arena.

“We had a really great friendship and I would love to have that again, you know, but without a couple steps in the right direction, I don’t see that happening.What should have been a 45-minute set had already stretched to two hours but he was having so much fun, he still didn’t want to go. “I don’t think we can have a friendship until there’s some accountability and some responsibility taken,” she said. I’m not doing that.’ And I had to walk away from something that I really believed was gonna be a forever relationship, and so that was difficult.”įYI, Chelsea and Jo (who tried therapy before their split) haven’t been in touch that much, and Chelsea said some things have to change before they’re friends again. I was like, ‘I’m not going to change this, I’m not going to change the way that I behave in order to make you feel more comfortable. No matter how much I loved this person-and I loved him so much-I was not going to abandon myself. She went on to say that “walking away from him was one of the most difficult things that I ever had to do” and that “there were just some behaviors that we couldn’t agree on, and it felt to me like I would have to abandon myself-which maybe I would have been okay to do if I were 20 or 25-but I wasn’t willing to do that. “And then toward the end of the relationship, it just became clear that this was not my person.”

“I’m not that hard up to get married, but I was open to the idea of it and we definitely discussed it at length, like, a lot ’cause it was important to him,” Chelsea added of her and Jo’s relationship.

Jo koy lights out online couch