The film season leading up to the 2024 Academy Awards provided four-time host Jimmy Kimmel with endless material for this year’s opening monologue. Taking his pick, the late-night comedian kicked off the night with a skit, complaining about being hungry while sitting alongside a teary-eyed Margot Robbie in place of the old woman she called beautiful in Barbie.
When he finally made it onto the stage, Kimmel kept his Barbie stan-dom going, noting one of the biggest snubs of the season: Greta Gerwig not being nominated for Best Director. When the room erupted in applause and agreement, he noted: “You’re the ones who didn’t vote for her, don’t act like you have nothing to do with this.”
And while he had the platform available to him, Kimmel decided to shoot his shot with Ryan Gosling. “Ryan, you are so hot,” he gushed. “Let’s go camping together and not tell our wives.”
The 2024 Oscars started an hour earlier than it normally does, but about five minutes after it was scheduled to begin tonight. Still, Kimmel made time to zero in on each Best Picture nominee. He praised Messi, the canine star of Anatomy of a Fall, for his performance as a great Frenchman and Emma Stone for her performance of a grown woman with the mind of a child, a pairing he compared to “the lady who gave the rebuttal to the State of the Union.”
The final segment of Kimmel’s speech was dedicated to the strikes that put Hollywood on hold for months in 2023. “We could be proud of the fact that this long and difficult work stoppage taught us that this very strange town of ours, as pretentious and superficial as it can be, at its heart is a union town,” he said. “It’s not just a bunch of heavily botoxed, Hailey Bieber smoothie-drinking, diabetes prescription-abusing, gluten sensitive nepo-babies, with perpetually shivering chihuahuas. This is a coalition of strong, hardworking, mentally tough American laborers.”
With the biggest stars seated in head-to-toe glam in the audience, the host took a moment to honor the ones who aren’t captured on the red carpet but play an integral role in keeping the system moving.
“The reason we were able to make the deals is because of the people who rally beside us so before we celebrate ourselves, let’s have a very well deserved round of applause for the people who work behind the scenes,” he shared, shouting out truck drivers, lighting crews, and all the other groupings of people who bring movies to life. “In your upcoming negotiation, we will stand with you, too.”
Kimmel landed his first Oscars hosting gig in 2017, the year of the infamous Moonlight vs La La Land mixup. He returned for the 2018 ceremony and now, with his fourth gig, joins Whoopi Goldberg and Jack Lemmon as the show’s only four-timers. If he’s invited back in the future, he’ll be tied with five-time host Johnny Carson. The reigning Academy Awards hosting champions are Bob Hope, who hosted 11 times, and Billy Crystal, who has hosted nine times.
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