American comedian and broadcaster Conan O’Brien, who recently hosted the 97th Academy Awards, has revealed the skit he originally conceived to open the show and shared dos and don’ts surrounding the iconic gold-plated statuette itself.
The former late night talk show host and SNL and The Simpsons writer earned strong reviews for his maiden Oscars, and used his podcast Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend alongside longtime head writer and telecast collaborator Mike Sweeney this week to dive into some of the secrets behind the biggest night in Hollywood.
O’Brien revealed how he wanted to do a promotional bit for the show whereby he and a nine-foot tall Oscar are in an unhappy relationship in their apartment and a grumpy O’Brien implores the supine statuette to help with the housework while it lies on the couch. “There was whispering and one of the people from the Academy come forward and said, ‘Oscar can never be horizontal’. That blew my mind,” said O’Brien. ”Wow. This is like the thigh bone of St. Peter. This is a religious icon.”
Sweeney noted how the statuette can never wear clothes, dashing an idea they had to put Oscar in an apron as it served O’Brien leftovers. “Oscar is always naked,” they were told.
By now audiences will be familiar with O’Brien’s cold open before the opening credits on March 2, when he appears to climb out of Demi Moore’s back in a parody of The Substance.
The sequence partly replaced a longer piece they had intended to do where O’Brien inserts himself into several of the season’s standout films, singing in green make-up in Wicked, and continuing the theme as a green combatant in Gladiator II, and into Conclave where a green arm extends to cast a vote, and then into Dune: Part Two and Nosferatu.
However that piece would have been too complicated to shoot in time and would have run to four or five minutes. When the LA wildfires tragedy unfolded, the telecast producers pivoted to an homage to Los Angeles and wanted to follow it with a shorter piece. Enter The Substance skit.
O’Brien also revealed: he did not write the Drake diss joke (“I’m not that well versed in the rap battles,” he said of the Drake-Kendrick Lamar feud); The Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger nudged him backstage to ask what the crowd was like, something the British rocker said he still does to this day before going on stage; and an ultimately sidelined proposal that the Dune sandworm waddle out on stage to present an award.
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