Conan O’Brien, the former host of The Tonight Show, will take over from Jimmy Kimmel as next year’s Oscars emcee.
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“America demanded it and now it’s happening: Taco Bell’s new Cheesy Chalupa Supreme. In other news, I’m hosting the Oscars,” O’Brien said in a statement Friday.
The gig will mark O’Brien’s first time fronting the program, but he has hosted other high-profile awards shows, including the Emmy Awards in 2002 and 2006 and the White House Correspondents’ dinner in 1995 and 2013. His emcee spot follows Kimmel’s two-year hosting stint (he also hosted the 2017 and 2018 ceremonies).
“I’m an Oscar winner!” O’Brien, 61, teased while holding an Oscar statuette.
“We are thrilled and honoured to have the incomparable Conan O’Brien host the Oscars this year,” Academy CEO Bill Kramer and president Janet Yang said in a joint statement. “He is the perfect person to help lead our global celebration of film with his brilliant humour, his love of movies and his live TV expertise. His remarkable ability to connect with audiences will bring viewers together to do what the Oscars do best — honour the spectacular films and filmmakers of this year.”
With his selection, Disney Television Group president Craig Erwich said O’Brien was joining “an iconic roster of comedy greats” that includes past hosts like Johnny Carson, Billy Crystal, David Letterman, Whoopi Goldberg, Chris Rock, Jon Stewart, Hugh Jackman and Neil Patrick Harris.
“Conan is a preeminent comedic voice, whose decades-long success is marked by his distinctive humour and perspective,” Erwich said. “He joins an iconic roster of comedy greats who have served in this role, and we are so lucky to have him centre stage for the Oscars.”
O’Brien began his career as a writer on Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons before spending nearly three decades on late-night TV, helming NBC’s Late Night with Conan O’Brien from 1993 to 2009 and The Tonight Show from 2009 to 2010. After he was replaced by Jay Leno, he fronted Conan from 2010 to 2021.
The Emmy winner also launched the podcast Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend and stars in the travel show Conan O’Brien Must Go, which streams on Crave.
Prior to the Academy’s announcement, Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman were rumoured to be in the mix to front the broadcast.
“The Oscars, yes. This is something I really genuinely would love to do with Hugh,” Reynolds said in an interview with Deadline after the pair took over Jimmy Kimmel‘s ABC talk show one night this summer. “We traveled in every country all over the world, and enjoyed every second of it … And so we got to Kimmel, and we just got loose. And it was, I thought, kind of an interesting way to host it. It feels like those old AFI dinners where everybody would get up there — they go from decades and decades ago all the way up to present day. And they look like what you sort of hope the Oscars could feel like, right? A bit of a roast, a bit of a loose kind of enjoyable experience. And, you know, it’s getting harder and harder out there, I think, for telecasts like that to kind of exist, it’s tricky. So, one day I’d love to do that, I don’t know about this year, but one day, yeah.”
But Reynolds stressed that he didn’t think that he would take over next year.
“A lot of things would have to happen that are kind of amazing. Part of it is that these movies like Deadpool & Wolverine, they consume my life, and I have four kids, and I want to be there. I want to see them, and they want to see me, and I want to walk into school with them, and I want to be able to be there present,” he said. “And if I were to host something like (the Oscars) as someone who, you know, kind of feels a bit of intense sort of anxiety, I wouldn’t be present mentally. I would be kind of constantly writing in my head, or projecting potentially tragic outcomes on the live stage.”
Ahead of this year’s show, Kimmel said he wasn’t sure he would be back. “I’ll say four seems like a solid number to me,” he told the Associated Press.
But Kimmel marvelled at his place in TV history after being asked to host four times.
“What I do is very fleeting. You do a show and then it’s gone. You don’t have much to show for it because it is so topical. The Oscars have a permanence that’s different for me and it’s fun. However it goes, I’ll always have that. When you watch these montages of 96 years of the Oscars, and to be in it, you have to be pretty jaded for that not to have an effect on you,” he said.
The 97th Oscars will air live on ABC on March 2 from the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.