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The 96th Oscars will premiere on March 10, 2024
The late-night comic Jimmy Kimmel stated last week that he didn’t think he would ever be back on the Oscars stage. What made him reconsider? Barbie.
The Los Angeles Times quoted Kimmel as saying, “I did not think I would ever do it again.” In 2017, he made his hosting debut at the Academy Awards, mis announcing La La Land as the winner of the best picture category instead of Moonlight. He came back in 2018 and then again the previous year.
“I did two of them, and they went well — something crazy happened at one of them with a story I’ll have for the rest of my life,” he said of the 2017 and 2018 gigs. “I know how much work goes into [the Oscars], so I thought, ‘Yeah, I don’t necessarily want to do this ever again.’”
Kimmel claimed that discussing films that his audience may not have seen contributes to the challenge of presenting the Oscars.
In 2017, he said, “I made a joke about Moonlight that made it clear to me that the vast majority of the room had not seen the movie, even though it won Best Picture.”
Last year, Kimmel said Top Gun: Maverick changed his mind. “I knew there was a movie that people had seen, and it just makes the job easier.”
Even though he believed that would be the last of it, Barbie left him feeling the same way about the ceremony in 2024.
“I am sitting in a movie theater watching Barbie and thinking, ‘Well, maybe I’ll do this again, because at least I have a point of reference with everyone,’” he said.
“I always dreamed of hosting the Oscars exactly four times,” Kimmel joked when he was announced as host in November.
Currently, he ranks fourth in the history of the Academy Awards in terms of frequency of hosting, behind Johnny Carson (five), Bob Hope (19), and Billy Crystal (nine). Molly McNearney, Kimmel’s spouse and co-head writer of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, is also an executive producer for the show.
