A conversation with Shirley Li about a thankless job on an actually normal night
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Last night, Jimmy Kimmel presided over a surprisingly normal Academy Awards show. The program ran smoothly with no true upsets. Oppenheimer took home a predicted haul, Ryan Gosling brought down the house with his performance of Barbie’s “I’m Just Ken,” and Kimmel made some mostly good-natured ribs about his fellow stars in the room. I spoke with my colleague Shirley Li, who covers Hollywood, about why hosting is a tough job, how Kimmel pulled it off, and what purpose the Oscars serve in 2024.
First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
Normal and Earnest
Lora Kelley: You’ve written about how hosting an awards show can be a pretty thankless job. What makes the task so hard?
Shirley Li: The people in the room at these Hollywood awards shows are powerful: They’re A-list celebrities and the people who will green-light the next films. A host is supposed to be entertaining them but also making light ribs, because that’s what they want.
At the same time, a host is trying to appeal to the completely different audience of consumers tuning in from home. The host has to do so much glad-handing while also taking all the blame if they don’t keep things moving. It’s a lot of attention paid to one person who, at the end of the night, doesn’t ever walk away with a trophy.
Lora: So why do people agree to do it?
Shirley: The exposure to Hollywood’s power players is huge, and it’s a rare opportunity for a lot of comics. They may feel that the exposure outweighs the pressure—though, as someone who has watched a lot of awards shows over the years and seen how much blame gets foisted upon these hosts, I think the pressure outweighs the exposure. I’m not surprised the Oscars turned to someone who had hosted several times before.
Lora: How do you think Jimmy Kimmel did last night?
Shirley: He was a solid host. His monologue was punchier than the previous three times he’s hosted. I thought the way that he ended the monologue, by bringing up the crew members backstage while also talking about last year’s Hollywood strikes, was a smart move. He did a good job of making jokes that appealed to the people in the room while also reminding the viewers at home about why what’s happening in Hollywood matters.
Kimmel is more of a late-night host than a stand-up comic. He has some wiggle room: He’s friends with the people in the audience; they’re inclined to applaud him and go along with bits, even if they’re a little on the insulting side. I was kind of surprised that he made a joke about Robert Downey Jr.’s past substance abuse. But Downey seemed willing to play along; they’ve known each other long enough that Kimmel was able to get some laughs and keep things moving. Kimmel is also someone who is known to people at home. There was—I hate to put it this way—a lot of Kimmel-core. You probably enjoyed that if you have watched his show, or have been exposed to his work in the past.
Lora: Who has been, in your mind, the ideal host? The writer Fran Hoepfner wrote on our site over the weekend that Billy Crystal is her ideal. Who is your Billy Crystal?
Shirley: Billy Crystal is my Billy Crystal too. I love that piece because the writer and I are the same generation. Crystal is the Oscars host I grew up with. It’s kind of like my view on Saturday Night Live: The cast that you grew up watching is your favorite cast of all time.
Crystal was a fantastic host because he appealed to the people in the room but also made things really digestible for people watching at home. Whoopi Goldberg was a fantastic host, too, because she could be self-effacing while also ribbing the films themselves. I remember seeing a lot of movie stars laughing with her. She had a way of making jokes about the films being feted that didn’t make anybody in the room uncomfortable.
Lora: Were there any surprises last night? What big moments stood out?
Shirley: This has been a long awards season. There are so many more awards shows than there need to be. So, going into the evening, I think people could pretty easily predict who was going to win.
Emma Stone’s win for Best Actress, for Poor Things, could be considered a surprise, though she and Lily Gladstone, who starred in Killers of the Flower Moon, were neck and neck throughout awards season. The consensus was that it would likely be Emma or Lily. Still, Stone did seem flabbergasted, as my colleague David Sims put it in his recap of the evening. It was a mild surprise that Poor Things got the same amount of love in the production categories as Oppenheimer—though Oppenheimer still took home seven Oscars.
It was a well-run, well-produced show. That’s actually kind of surprising given all the shocking moments at the Oscars in the previous decade. Nobody slapped anybody. At this point you expect something to go wrong, and nothing really went wrong.
Last night, the show brought back, for the first time since 2009, the format of previous category winners monologuing about the categories’ nominees. I personally love that format because it’s heartfelt, and it’s earnest.
People often ask: What’s the point of honoring and being so lovey-dovey about filmmaking, of watching these A-listers clap one another on the back? In our social-media age, we tend to want things to be ironic and cynical and contrarian. But the Oscars are a reminder that there’s a lot of love and creativity that’s put into art no matter how you feel about the nominated movies. There’s so much care put into this work.
Related:
Today’s News
Evening Read
Fruit Chaos Is Coming
By Zoë Schlanger
Summer, to me, is all about stone fruit: dark-purple plums, peaches you can smell from three feet away. But last summer, I struggled to find peaches at the farmers’ markets in New York City. A freak deep freeze in February had taken them out across New York State and other parts of the Northeast, buds shriveling on the branch as temperatures plummeted below zero and a brutally cold, dry wind swept through the region.
The loss was severe.
Read the full article.
More From The Atlantic
Culture Break
Watch. Last night, Da’Vine Joy Randolph won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar. In her acceptance speech, she voiced her hope that she would “get to do this more than once.”
Read. David Toomey’s latest book, Kingdom of Play, probes a question that has long befuddled scientists: Why do animals play?
Play our daily crossword.
Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.
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