Sparing us all the pain of having to watch Billy Crystal try to come up with a musical rhyme for “Brutalist,” the host of this year’s Academy Awards will be none other than former late-night talk show host/current acclaimed dramatic actor Conan O’Brien.
But what will a Conan-hosted Oscars look like? Will there be singing? Pre-filmed bits? Will he spend an ungodly amount of time introducing Oprah Winfrey to Uma Thurman?
O’Brien recently chatted with Good Morning America’s Chris Connelly about his approach to the gig. One of the first questions that was posed to him was about just how mean he plans to be on “Hollywood’s Biggest Night.” It’s a fair line of inquiry considering that brutally ridiculing famous people has basically become the norm for movie award show hosts. Ricky Gervais very (very) vocally took that approach to hosting the Golden Globes in recent years, and there was much discussion about just how badly Nikki Glaser would roast the stars attending this year’s Golden Globes.
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But roast jokes haven’t always been the best fit at the slightly-less drunken Oscars. For example, during last year’s show, host Jimmy Kimmel tried to zing Robert Downey Jr. with a hacky reference to his drug problems that felt like a joke that Jay Leno would have cut from his monologue in 1996.
“You look out and you see the biggest stars in Hollywood in front of you, do you go after them? Do you bounce things off of them? Are you kind to them?” Connelly asked O’Brien.
“I go after the ones who have personally been cruel to me,” O’Brien joked, prompting Connelly to fire back: “Where to begin?”
“I can let someone have it if I think, in the moment, they really need it,” O’Brien admitted. “But I’m also very comfortable, as a comedian, putting the joke on me.”
Throughout his career, Conan’s biggest comedic punching bag has been himself. His talent for self-deprecation seemingly knows no bounds, as evidenced by the time he invited Arnold Schwarzenegger to laugh at his half-naked body on network television.
But he does also have the ability to be mean, and hilariously so. He just doesn’t make it his entire comedic identity. Perhaps the best evidence of Conan’s crueler side is his decades-long relationship with his producer and know-it-all frenemy Jordan Schlansky.
During the GMA interview, Conan also revealed that his biggest challenge right now is trying to anticipate the right tone for the show. “L.A. has just been through this traumatic experience. There’s a lot that’s happening nationally that people are very tense about,” O’Brien explained. “It changes day-to-day. So my job right now with my writers is to create possibilities. “We’re going to have to get very close to the actual airdate to figure out what works (and) what doesn’t work.”
“It’s a tricky show, it’s a tricky time,” Conan noted. “And I’m going to give it my best shot. And if it doesn’t work out you will never see me again.”
Sadly, not all Oscar hosts have made that same promise.
