diff --git a/meta-openembedded/meta-oe/recipes-test/googletest/googletest_git.bb b/meta-openembedded/meta-oe/recipes-test/googletest/googletest_git.bb
index b675ea0..354e7de 100644
--- a/meta-openembedded/meta-oe/recipes-test/googletest/googletest_git.bb
+++ b/meta-openembedded/meta-oe/recipes-test/googletest/googletest_git.bb
@@ -21,3 +21,11 @@
 RDEPENDS_${PN}-dev += "${PN}-staticdev"
 
 BBCLASSEXTEND = "native nativesdk"
+
+do_configure_prepend() {
+    # explicitly use python3
+    # the scripts are already python3 compatible since https://github.com/google/googletest/commit/d404af0d987a9c38cafce82a7e26ec8468c88361 and other fixes like this
+    # but since this oe-core change http://git.openembedded.org/openembedded-core/commit/?id=5f8f16b17f66966ae91aeabc23e97de5ecd17447
+    # there isn't python in HOSTTOOLS so "env python" fails
+    sed -i 's@^#!/usr/bin/env python$@#!/usr/bin/env python3@g' ${S}/googlemock/scripts/*py ${S}/googlemock/scripts/generator/*py ${S}/googlemock/scripts/generator/cpp/*py ${S}/googlemock/test/*py ${S}/googletest/scripts/*py ${S}/googletest/test/*py
+}