Tag: oscars

With days to go before the 95th Academy Awards, Rebecca Ford and David Canfield make some educated guesses about what this year’s show will look like and how they’ll handle last year’s biggest controversy, the slap. 

Rebecca Ford: I think it is safe to say that there will be a lot of scrutiny of this year’s Academy Awards broadcast. The past few years have been bumpy—the COVID-altered 2021 ceremony was followed by last year’s many layers of controversy, from the slap to the inclusion of the “fan-favorite award,” which went to Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead. I think we’d all like to forget about that one. 

The Academy has brought in new leadership—CEO Bill Kramer and President Janet Yang—along with veterans to produce and host the show. They’ve been hinting about what we can expect from this year’s show, but I would guess they still have a couple surprises up their sleeves. Let’s start with the biggest lingering question, and maybe the show’s biggest hurdle: David, what are you expecting them to do about the slap?

David Canfield: When I attended the Oscar nominees’ luncheon last month, I was surprised by how directly and forcefully Yang addressed what happened last year—communicating directly to the Academy’s selections for 2023 that the handling of that whole fiasco was unacceptable, and that they’ve learned from it. I sensed in her tone a broader commitment to smoothing out some rough edges that’ve been evident on the broadcast for years, as you note. 

In short, I think the main response to the slap, as it were, will actually be pretty invisible: Going back to Oscar basics to devise a show that leaves little room for chaotic outbursts, and more for doing what Hollywood does best: celebrating itself. They’ve even got a “crisis team” on hand, and I’ve heard that the dinner table layout employed last year (which allowed Smith to more easily crash the stage) is being replaced by the traditional theatrical layout. So if you want to rush up, better have an aisle seat!

That’s not to say we won’t hear anything. Judging by Chris Rock’s recent Netflix-special ratings and our own internal barometers, public interest in the slap’s fallout remains high and you can count on Jimmy Kimmel—an old pro when it comes to Oscars hosting, who very much fashions himself as a voice for the casual viewer—to hit it hard. In preshow interviews, he’s stayed vague and a little glib about how he might respond, which is to be expected. Indications are that he’s not going to really lean into it in his monologue, though—and as a comic’s comic, we’ll see what kind of stops he can pull out in the process.

To zoom out a bit, Rebecca, you spoke with Yang for our Awards Insider issue about coming into the Academy at such a fraught moment. In the context of this year’s show, what did you sense about how she and Kramer are seeing things for this coming ceremony, and beyond?

Ford:  During my chat with Yang, she promised a “slap-free” show, but she also made it clear that the goal was to move forward and not harp on the past. Kramer also recently went on Puck’s podcast and stated that the crisis team is there so that they can take action, should anything dramatic happen. One of the main criticisms last year of the slap was that there was no action taken after it happened. “We have to make a decision and we have to act quickly,” Kramer said. “It’s a live television show, and we have to be able to pivot and do something in real time, and now we’re set up to make those decisions.”

Say you’re playing a word association game and someone gives you “Oscars.” Somewhere in the first five words you might venture—statues, awards, Billy Crystal—will be the phrase “red carpet.” It’s such a ubiquitous element of the entertainment industry’s biggest awards show that E! built an entire franchise around it. Not to give too much of a glimpse behind the curtain here at VF.com, but we know how you search for awards show fashion—and there are two particular words that get you there. 

Yet the Oscars are betting this year that a champagne carpet might be a change worth investing in. At a ceremony outside the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles on Wednesday, host Jimmy Kimmel, Academy CEO Bill Kramer, and Academy president Janet Yang were on hand for the rollout of the arrivals carpet, which this year will be a distinctly muted champagne/sand/beige shade. Kimmel was ready with a joke about the carpet that, perhaps inevitably, referenced The Slap: “People have been asking, ‘Is there going to be any trouble this year? Is there going to be any violence this year?’ And we certainly hope not,” he said. “But if there is, I think the decision to go with a champagne carpet rather than a red carpet shows how confident we are that no blood will be shed.”

It’s possible the production team will shed more light on the change at a press conference later on Wednesday, but they’re well aware of the precedent they’re breaking. According to ABC, the Oscar arrivals carpet has been red since 1961. 

As anyone who has entered the Vanity Fair Oscar party knows, the red carpet is a state of mind, even if said carpet is green-and-white striped or a particularly lovely peacock blue. Odds are you will still see a lot of TV hosts referring to the “red carpet” on Oscar Sunday out of force of habit, and we can only hope that anyone who was planning to wear a champagne-colored gown got some fair warning so they don’t risk blending into the background. 

The main question this raises, though, is how many other changes are in store, as the Oscars continue their seemingly endless efforts to tweak traditions and gain new viewers. A new carpet is a much better gambit than, say, eliminating some categories from the telecast, or inventing new categories that are awarded by bots. Maybe the champagne carpet is a preview of potential other changes to come: subtle, classy, something you might not even notice at first. 

Or maybe it’s just fixing something that wasn’t broken in the first place—another Oscar telecast tradition we may not be rid of yet. 

Listen to Vanity Fair’s Little Gold Men podcast now.