🎧 Making Oscar Great Again: How Do You Follow 'I'm Just Ken'?
The show's producers tell me how they're 'reimagining' it for 2025. Plus: Final Oscar predictions with Vulture's Joe Reid
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“The problem with live television is that as long as it goes well, nobody notices. It’s when something goes wrong — that’s when the chatter starts.”
That’s Katy Mullan, who as you read this is somewhere deep inside the Dolby Theatre doing everything she can to make sure nothing goes wrong on Sunday during the 97th Academy Awards. On this week’s episode of the Prestige Junkie podcast, Mullan and fellow Oscars executive producer Raj Kapoor peek from behind the veil of secrecy to tell me about their preparations for this year’s show, from working with first-time host Conan O’Brien to wrangling a parade of celebrities for rehearsals the day before the show.
“Saturday is probably one of the most fun days,” says Kapoor, who is producing the Oscars for the fifth time this year. “We get to see all the presenters, and they come in one after another. Pretty much every 15, 20 minutes there’s a new star, a new celebrity on our stage, a new presenter.” Adds Mullan, “A lot of the time with these big shows, you get very little rehearsal, very little time with talent. The Oscars still has that draw” to get them in the door, she says.
Last year was Mullan’s first producing the Oscars (previous credits include Jamie Foxx’s latest Netflix special and Christmas at Graceland), and she admits she’s “sleeping a lot better this year” with some experience behind her. But she and Kapoor are also facing the challenge of topping last year’s very successful outing, from Ryan Gosling’s show-stopping “I’m Just Ken” to a naked John Cena.
“There were certain things that we loved about how the show looked, but we also didn’t want to necessarily repeat ourselves,” says Kapoor, who’s the special’s showrunner. “So we do have a new set design, and it’s kind of a combination of us using pieces that we really loved, but then also reimagining how the entire show flows.”
We’ll have to wait until Sunday to see exactly what he means by that — the Oscars telecast kicks off on ABC at 4 p.m. PT and will also stream live on Hulu for the first time — but for a sneak preview of what’s in store, listen to Kapoor and Mullan on today’s pod. This episode also includes a conversation between me and Vulture’s Joe Reid about our final Oscar predictions in all 23 categories, from the sure things (congratulations on your costume design Oscar, Wicked) to the true toss-ups (Adrien Brody and Timothée Chalamet, you should probably both be preparing speeches).
Really? Making Oscar Great Again? Has Trump appointed himself the head of the Oscars too, or do you just wish he would? That’s what this headline implies. Very poor taste, at best.