3 Big Ideas to Fix Oscar Host Phobia
A parachuting Tom Cruise, Lady Gaga, Keke Palmer? Where the Academy Awards could start
Now that we’re in mid-October and virtually every Oscar campaign is fully up and running, I’ve started a Google doc for myself titled simply “Oscar Buzz.” Because it’s very easy to have perfect hindsight in March and sense that a certain best picture winner was inevitable, but it’s this time of year — when my inbox is full of blasts about special screenings hosted by celebrities — where the actual chaos of the process is in full view.
Some recent highlights: Kristen Stewart hosted a screening of Anora in New York City, posing with star Mikey Madison and looking like the two chicest, most terrifying girls from your high school. In London, Greta Gerwig, the president of this year’s Cannes jury, presented the cast of Emilia Pérez with their shared best actress award — at the ceremony in May, only Karla Sofia Gascón was still in town to accept.
If you’re in Los Angeles, you can catch Dune: Part Two back on the big screen, with director Denis Villeneuve along with “his filmmaking team and esteemed guests” on hand for some Q&As Oct. 20-25. When I wrote last week about how spring and summer releases can reignite their awards campaigns in the fall, Dune: Part Two was top of mind — and this kind of widespread screening strategy, appealing to general audiences as well as awards voters, feels like exactly the right move for them.
If you’re on the east coast, however, it’s not too late to get your tickets for my panel at the Montclair Film Festival on October 20, where I’ll be joined by Sony Pictures Classics co-president and cofounder Tom Bernard as well as two of my favorite awards season experts, Chris Murphy of Vanity Fair and Chris Rosen of Gold Derby. Got a burning question you want us to answer onstage? E-mail me! katey@theankler.com
Today I’m looking a bit further ahead in the season, thinking about what an Oscars show with “lighter lift” hosting duties might look like — and which of this year’s contenders, next year’s blockbuster stars and promising young talents ought to participate.
The consensus for a while now has been that hosting the Oscars is a thankless job that anyone with any sense tries to avoid. Will Packer, who produced the Oscars in 2022, told me as much when we spoke this summer: “It is a role that a lot of Hollywood talent feel like is a no-win proposition. If you do well, it’s like, okay, it’s the Oscars and nobody’s probably gonna watch anyway. Even though you did good, you’re gonna get blamed for it. If you don’t do well, then of course all the spears and arrows come out.”
Packer emphasized how proud he was that they managed to get hosts at all — Amy Schumer, Regina Hall and Wanda Sykes shared the duty — and that when Hollywood talent is asked to do the job, they all have the same question: “‘What’s the win for me?’ It used to be something that was one of the most coveted jobs in Hollywood. It has long not been that, I can tell you.”
Clearly the Academy is aware of this, too. As Puck reported last week, the Academy is said to be reaching out to talent with the promise of a “lighter lift” hosting gig, requiring less rehearsal and, presumably, less pressure. The idea could be to spread the hosting duties among multiple people, the way it was when Packer produced or in most Oscar years before the early '90s — oh, to have been alive in 1958 when Bob Hope, David Niven, Jimmy Stewart, Rosalind Russell and Donald Duck all hosted together!
I. Extended Bits With Host-Worthy Talent
The most likely outcome, I think, is for the role of a main host to be reduced in favor of more extensive bits from other performers. Think of John Mulaney’s Field of Dreams bit from earlier this year, basically a televised glimpse of the bang-up job he did hosting the Academy’s Governors Awards the previous fall. (Mulaney is said to have turned down the official Oscar hosting gig, to all of our great sorrow, but if he can now command a reported $2 million to do a corporate gig where people loved him for eviscerating his hosts and the audience, I get it).
I’m personally partial to group efforts like The Devil Wears Prada reunion at the SAG Awards this year, or even Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig’s iconically silly presentation at the 2013 Golden Globes. Credit where it’s due to the eternally beleaguered Globes: They knew well enough to have Ferrell and Wiig reprise the bit during this year’s ceremony. Then again, we all remember how much Tommy Lee Jones was famously unamused the first time.
Academy CEO Bill Kramer isn’t sharing a lot of details about how this might work, of course, and the Academy didn’t offer comment when I reached out. To Puck, Kramer reiterated that “we want the Oscars to be the place where studios and filmmakers unveil the most exciting things about their work — beloved characters and stories, legacy moments, and upcoming releases.”
In recent years that’s looked more like awkward promos of, say, the trailer for The Little Mermaid or sweaty rebrands like the “Oscars Cheer Moment” as a way to include more blockbusters in the broadcast. But there’s a way to do all of this that leans more on the talent than the product itself.
Take Emily Blunt and Ryan Gosling’s incredibly charming faux-rivalry from this year’s awards. It didn’t help The Fall Guy at the box office that much, it seems, but it was a perfect example of what the Oscars can be when they actually take advantage of having all this talent under one roof.
Getting Blunt or Gosling to block out two months of their schedule to host the Oscars would have been impossible; working with them for actually clever presenter banter that played off their natural chemistry was not.
So what could next year’s version of this look like?
Let’s start with the people who would make excellent Oscar hosts, but if they’re not willing to take on the whole thing, we can at least get them for one sterling bit. The Only Murders trio of Selena Gomez, Martin Short and Steve Martin are obvious shoo-ins, and have also reportedly turned down the gig before. They were terrific together at the opening of the Emmys in September, they seem to genuinely like each other — and with Gomez a fairly likely nominee for Emilia Pérez — they would have plenty of new material to work with.
We can also hope that Mulaney might also make a return appearance. No host has been announced for this year’s Governors Awards, so it’s possible he’ll be back there as well, but even if he’s preserving his hosting energy for projects like Everybody’s in LA, he can at least bring a tight five to the Oscars stage.
I’ve long said, including on FYCIt’s The Season podcast recently, that Lady Gaga would be an exceptional Oscars host. Her Oscar hopes for Joker: Folie á Deux may have faded, and that may make her less inclined to take the Oscar stage. But if you can take advantage of Gaga’s unique position as a bridge between Old Hollywood and the present and pair her with an aging Hollywood star who needs an assist (think of Gaga with Liza Minnelli in 2022).
Here’s a free idea: Next year Sunset Boulevard turns 75, and the film’s best supporting actress nominee Nancy Olson is now 96. How’s that for an anniversary tribute?
There are some younger stars I’ve also hoped might take on the Oscar hosting gig someday — and who might be able to use a shorter segment to test the waters. Tom Holland, whose stage presence is so incredible his lip sync battle still routinely goes viral, seems to be taking a break from the spotlight, but with his longtime girlfriend Zendaya a possible nominee for Challengers, might he be willing to take a trip to the Dolby?
Then there’s Keke Palmer, who is busy hosting Password on daytime television, but has the quick wit as well as song-and-dance chops to make a real impact in a brief Oscars appearance. To go back to Gaga for a moment, think of her appearance alongside Julie Andrews for a Sound of Music tribute in 2015. It gave her Oscars in-group bona fides years before her A Star Is Born nomination, something Palmer — an Academy member herself as of last year — absolutely deserves as well.
II. Get Those Contenders Onstage!
The pool of potential presenters for the Oscars is, by nature, a lot more limited than it is for awards shows that happen before the nominations — if you’ve been snubbed for an Oscar nomination, you’re not all that likely to want to take the stage. But at this point in the season we can at least imagine a list of this year’s contenders who might be as good onstage together as Blunt and Gosling were last go-round.
The actress trio at the center of Emilia Pérez — Gascón, Gomez and Zoe Saldaña — have already established an excellent rapport on the campaign trail, and could even be tapped in to perform if one of the film’s original songs is nominated. Gomez might already be onstage with her Only Murders co-stars, but there’s nothing wrong with double dipping!
Sing Sing is an excellent ensemble about the act of putting on a show — if we can perform musical numbers from movies, couldn’t we perform an excerpt of the fictional play at its center, Breakin’ the Mummy’s Code? Anora has an irresistible quartet as its center, led by star Mikey Madison. And the mind reels at the potential of reuniting Challengers stars Zendaya, Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor onstage to do just about anything.
Even the traditional format of a pair of presenters could get a nice jolt with the right duo. Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin have a nice, amiably fractious dynamic in A Real Pain that could translate well to the stage. Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield have been an incredible team promoting their romantic dramedy We Live in Time. And most people haven’t seen Babygirl yet, but trust me: You want Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson together on that stage.
III. Creative Coming Attractions
Bill Kramer specifically said he wants the Oscars to promote upcoming releases, not just the gems of the previous year’s calendar. When you look at the possibilities for promoting the 2025 slate at the Mar. 2 ceremony, there sure are plenty of options.
Picture it: Tom Cruise rappelling from the ceiling into the arms of his Mission: Impossible co-star Hannah Waddingham. Potential best actor nominees Sebastian Stan, Colman Domingo and Ralph Fiennes, who also have major summer releases on the calendar, taking the stage together to establish a friendly rivalry of their own. Do the Oscars consider themselves too classy to work in something with the cast of I Never Forget What You Did Last Summer? They shouldn’t!
Unlike all the other awards shows, which continue to march forward with stand-up comedians as their very capable hosts, the Oscars have the attention of actual, bona-fide movie stars, who all on some level would like to be on that stage in front of the most powerful audience in the world. So why not make that an easier thing to accomplish — and just build a more entertaining show in the process?
In the last few years, ABC/Disney has wanted the Oscar host(s) to have some sort of connection, however tenuous, to their conglomerate. Along those lines, look for tag-team Kardashians to be hosting before you know it.
Uh, "Password" is a prime time show. There are more game shows in prime time these days then daytime and the only network daytime game shows are "The Price is Right" and "Let's Make a Deal." Keke is the best part of this version, which is hurt by overhyping and the presence of Jimmy Fallon. But she still ain't Allen Ludden (and she really doesn't need to be).