Conan O’Brien had a tough act to follow at the 97th Academy Awards Sunday night after nominees Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande brought down the house with a medley of songs from The Wizard of Oz, The Wiz, and Wicked.
After a brief parody video of The Substance, “four-time Oscar viewer” O’Brien emerged onto the stage to begin his monologue for “Hollywood’s biggest night... that begins at four in the afternoon.”
Next up was a series of middling bits about the Best Picture nominees (sample joke about Conclave’s logline: “A movie about the Catholic Church, but don’t worry!”) But O’Brien really got the room’s attention for the first time when he brought up the season’s big controversy over Emilia Pérez star Karla Sofía Gascón’s racist tweets.
“Anora uses the F-word 479 times,” the host remarked. “That’s three more than the record set by Karla Sofía Gascón’s publicist.”
From there, O’Brien highlighted the fact that Gascon was seated in the audience after skipping out on the rest of awards season. At the mention of her name, the first trans woman to be nominated for Best Actress put up her hands in prayer towards the host, but she might have ultimately thought twice about embracing him.
“And Karla, if you’re going to tweet about the Oscars, remember, my name is Jimmy Kimmel,” O’Brien joked as Gascon appeared to either not hear or not understand what he said, turning to her seat mate for clarification on what exactly was happening.
But while O’Brien did go there on that controversy, he steered clear of politics—as he indicated he would in an interview with The New York Times ahead of Sunday’s show. While there “might be political jokes here and there,” he said, “if it’s a screed, I’m doing a disservice to everybody. I’m actually doing a disservice to the people who might agree with the screed, in my opinion.”
“However anyone voted should not be a prerequisite for whether you enjoy the show,” the host said “I feel very strongly about that.”
So with that in mind, there were no explicit Trump jokes in the opening monologue—unless you count O’Brien berating his friend Adam Sandler for being underdressed in the audience as some sort of subtle commentary on the Zelensky Oval Office meeting.
