The Randomness of People's Sexiest Man Alive 2024

John Krasinski is People’s choice. But is he people’s choice?

In a Season 5 episode of The Office, the Dunder Mifflin staff heatedly debate whether Oscar-winning actress Hilary Swank is hot or not. “She’s not hot,” says Phyllis. “She looks like a monster,” says Kevin. “She is a beautiful movie star,” Jim, played by John Krasinski, offers up as a counterpoint, then suggests the group put it to a vote. They net out at a draw. “I think all of us have a tendency to view celebrities as sort-of mythical figures,” he suggests. “We don’t really see them as real, so therefore we don’t judge them as real people.”

15 years later, at midnight on Tuesday evening during The Tonight Show, host Stephen Colbert was proud to sit down with Krasinski, People Magazine’s newly minted Sexiest Man Alive, a reveal that had been teased for days in the lead-up. He follows in the footsteps of Mel Gibson, Tom Cruise, Johnny Depp and Blake Shelton (what a crowd) before him in the 39-year lineage of the designation. “I like how it says ‘alive,’” Krasinski joked, “because Sexiest Man Not Alive, I have no contest.” The self-deprecation, interpretable as charm, continued when he joked that he was pretty sure the designation was a bit or some kind of prank. In his official People Mag interview, he’d deploy a similar line, saying that upon learning the news, he thought that “maybe I’m being punked.”

The above link to the feature includes three photos of Krasinski, wearing the same pair of jeans in all three images and looking like a Tisch student taking fresh headshots ahead of their senior showcase, accompanied by a pithy 307-word editorial. More of both is promised in the issue that hits newsstands on Friday.

The reaction online was expectedly vitriolic (it’s 2024, after all), but with an undercurrent of “huh?”