Our 2026 Oscars Recap

At the Oscars, One Battle After Another took home six awards including best picture, Michael B. Jordan won for lead actor in Sinners, and the telecast had plenty of jokes at Timothée Chalamet’s expense. We’re recapping the highs and lows of the 2026 Oscars. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 0:16Stephen Thompson?

  You're listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour, the podcast that keeps you plugged in about the latest and greatest in movies, TV, music, and more. If you're a pop culture junkie who's not following the show yet, we're recommending you fix that right now by following Pop Culture Happy Hour on your favorite podcast app. Now, on to our Oscars recap.

• 0:41Stephen Thompson?

  One battle after another, Michael B. Jordan, Jessie Buckley, and K-pop were among the big winners at Sunday Night's Academy Awards. We'll debate if the old-school feel of the telecast worked for us, and yes, we'll get into those jokes at Timothy Chalamet's expense. I'm Stephen Thompson. It is 12:02 a.m. and we are recapping the highs and lows of this year's Oscars on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour.

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• 2:30Stephen Thompson?

  Joining me today are my fellow pop culture happy hour hosts, Linda Holmes. Hey Linda.

• 2:34Aisha Harris?

  Hello, Stephen.

• 2:35Stephen Thompson?

  Aisha Harris, how's it going? Viva la revolution, Stephen. They showed that quite a few times. Glen Weldon, hey buddy.

• 2:42Speaker 04

  Hey pal.

• 2:43Stephen Thompson?

  All right, we're gonna get right to it. Biggest winner of the night, six Academy Awards, one battle after another, one Best Picture, Paul Thomas Anderson won for directing and adapted screenplay, Sean Penn won for actor in a supporting role, the inaugural casting award went to Cassandra Kula Kounde's, and the film also won for editing. What did y'all think?

• 3:05Aisha Harris?

  I mean, this kind of feels like when Martin Scorsese won for The Departed, where it's like, okay, is this your best film? I don't think so, but it's time. As I said, when we had our preview episode leading up to the Oscars tonight, I just think that that is something that the Academy loves to do, and I'm okay with that. It's a good movie. I have my quibbles, but overall, not at all upset or surprised.

• 3:30Linda Holmes?

  I am not a big one battle after another girl. I don't tend to be a big Paul Thomas Anderson girl, but I recognize the skill with which a lot of it was made, including a heck of a good car chase. And, you know, I recognize some very good performances in there. Tiana Taylor, I think, does the best that could possibly be done with that character. And listen, it's not my cup of tea, but Paul Thomas Anderson never won. He was, in a sense, due, and I do not begrudge him his Oscars.

• 4:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think we were all pulling for Coogler, but the guy's in his 30s. He'll get a shot. About that casting award, that was the first ever casting award. I wondered how they were gonna present it. And what they did was they kind of echoed something that they've done before, where they would have past winners in the acting categories give a tongue bath to the current nominees. But this felt fundamentally different, and I'm not exactly sure why. It just felt like- Gratitude.

• 4:25Stephen Thompson?

  Right.

• 4:26Speaker 04

  Like coming from a place of sincerity, like these people got me my job. And I don't know, it kind of took the curse off it for me. It really worked.

• 4:34Linda Holmes?

  Well, I think there's also a difference between when those tongue baths are given to people like actors who tend to get a lot of tongue baths.

• 4:42Stephen Thompson?

  Yeah.

• 4:42Linda Holmes?

  And when they're given to somebody like a casting director, who I think the fact that this was the first time there's ever been this Oscar, made it a lot more palatable to hear people express exactly the gratitude that you're talking about. And honestly, if you go look up the resumes for all the people who are nominated, casting directors have the most fascinating resumes.

• 5:02Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 5:03Linda Holmes?

  Once you do that, it all makes sense why they wanted to be so kind of gushing toward them and good for them. Now, if you're giving a tongue bath to the same three nominees every year for however long, it'll feel different. But this year, none of these people are famous to the average Oscar viewer. So it makes a lot of sense that they were recognized for what they do.

• 5:23Stephen Thompson?

  And I think in this case, it was especially appropriate that you had Chase Infinity there on the screen, kind of helping introduce this award. She's one of the kind of leads in One Battle After Another. And it was very much a discovery for, I think, a lot of viewers coming out of this.

• 5:38Speaker 06

  She spent years searching for Willa, and she saw something in me that I didn't even know was there. Her belief in me helped me believe in myself. And thanks to her determination, imagination, and instincts, I was cast in my first feature film, One Battle After Another.

• 5:52Stephen Thompson?

  One of the things that you're getting with this casting award is this sense like, oh, wow, you thought to cast Leonardo DiCaprio, congratulations. But like, no, there were also people who were kind of discovered, you know, in part from their performances in this movie. I'm a little bit with Linda, like, I think all of us were kind of rooting for Sinners. But I do think this race, kind of boiling down to One Battle After Another and Sinners, which we'll talk about in a second, felt a little bit like the Oscars from 15 or 20 years ago, when it was between There Will Be Blood and No Country For Old Men, where like you really kind of had these two major, heavy hitting frontrunners, you know, directed by kind of powerhouse directors. And it really kind of came down to those two films.

• 6:35Stephen Thompson?

  Ultimately, this race felt kind of similar. And one thing that, you know, anybody who came out on the short end of that. Can say is like, people still talk about both there will be blood and and no country for old men. It's not like either of these films is likely to be memory hold anytime soon.

• 6:52Linda Holmes?

  Well, getting the statuette is zero sum, but having your movie be beloved is not zero sum. And listen, the winner of the inaugural casting award being someone who also worked on casting both The Brutalist and Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle is, in my opinion, that's a win for everyone.

• 7:12Stephen Thompson?

  Fascinating. All right, well, next up, Sinners won four Oscars, Ryan Coogler won for Best Original Screenplay, Michael B. Jordan won for Actor in a Leading Role. If only somebody had predicted that. Autumn Derald Arkapaw won for Cinematography. She is the first woman to win in this category. And Ludwig Gorenson won for Score. What did you think of the role, you know, Sinners played in this telecast?

• 7:39Aisha Harris?

  I mean, look, I've beat this horse dead at this point. I I don't care, and yet I was so ecstatic. When when first Ryan Coogler won for Original Screenplay and then when Michael B. Jordan won, I literally like yelped out loud and threw my hands up in the air as if I was watching a football game, which I never do. It's just like, it was a really lovely moment.

• 8:05Speaker 07

  Thank you, everybody in this room and everybody at home for supporting me over my career. I feel it. I know you guys want me to do well and and I and I and I want to do that because you guys bet on me. So thank you for keeping for keep betting on me.

• 8:19Aisha Harris?

  I don't think symbolically this means much at all. I I think these awards, especially for, you know, people of color, it's great for them. I'm happy for them, but it doesn't actually concretely mean that anything has fundamentally changed. He's about the same age as me. I've basically grown up with this dude and from The Wire to Finite Lights, I never watched Parenthood, but I hear he was really good in Parenthood, like, and then his whole entire career, the way that Ryan Coogler just knows what to do with him, and I hope some other directors figure out what to do with him. Because so far I haven't seen it, but I'm just so happy that this happened. And I do think even though Ryan Coogler didn't wind up winning best director or best picture,

• 9:04Aisha Harris?

  I can say honestly, for the first time ever, that I feel as though he is a black creator who will eventually have his it's time moment like Paul Thomas Anderson has had. It's very rare for any black person to win it more than once. Denzel's done it, Ruthie Carter, the costume designer. But other than that, it's like you get one shot and that's pretty much it. Oh, and and Mahershala Ali has won twice as well. And I think Ryan Coogler, like even though he didn't win the other awards that I kind of wanted him to win, I feel confident that he will get there eventually and I will be so happy for him.

• 9:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, and that Arkapaw win for cinematography, I'm gonna make the case it was the best acceptance speech of the night and one of the best acceptance speeches I can remember. It's maybe the perfect Oscar speech because it was composed, but still emotional. And most importantly, it met the moment. It was a historic win. She also invited us all to take a breath and accept the moment for, she was, she was inviting us to recognize it for her and accept it for everyone, for all of us watching it. You know, when she asked all the women in the audience to stand up.

• 10:07Speaker 08

  I'm so honored to be here and I really want all the women in the room to stand up because I feel like I don't get here without you guys.

• 10:17Speaker 04

  That was such a classy move. That was so, that was such a great moment.

• 10:22Linda Holmes?

  Absolutely. I think it's very difficult when you win to be like, the fact that I just won is historic, right? Because on the one hand, you want to give recognition to the fact that it's kind of depressing that you're the first woman to ever win in this category. On the other hand, you want to be happy about it and encourage other people to be happy about it. You know, it's difficult in an acceptance speech to entirely be like, yay, me. I made history, even when it's transparently true. So I think balancing all of those things that you kind of maybe want to do in a speech like that, or that I feel like I would want to do in a speech like that. I agree with you, Glenn. I think it was very impressive how she handled it, I thought. And like, what an incredibly, again, richly deserved award for

• 11:06Stephen Thompson?

  Yes.

• 11:07Linda Holmes?

  somebody who not only has done such great work in feature films, but it was so smart to use somebody who's done so much in music videos as she has, because given what this film is, so smart, such a good collaboration, just love it all.

• 11:21Stephen Thompson?

  Yeah, that movie is absolutely stunning to look at in every frame. I'm so, so glad she won here. Linda, you mentioned the music in Sinners. Sinners also played a role in this telecast in the performance of I Lied To You.

• 11:35Speaker 09

  Speak your words. I know that you were first, so I lied to you. So I'm gonna tell you for a long time that it might hurt you. Hope that I lose my mind.

• 11:54Stephen Thompson?

  Miles Keaton performed it. Raphael Sadek, who co-wrote the song, was part of the performance. They were joined onstage by Buddy Guy and Brittany Howard from the Alabama Shakes, and Shaboozie, and Alice Smith, and Bobby Rush. And you know, you get like, you get like, three seconds of Shaboozie, and you go, that's Shaboozie.

• 12:14Linda Holmes?

  And Misty Copeland dancing.

• 12:15Stephen Thompson?

  Misty Copeland dancing. You had so many just great musical presences swirling around. And it really felt, as kind of chaotic as it was, and as frankly terrible as the sound was, that the entire telecast. I thought that performance captured some of the like, dizzying effect of experiencing that song the way that it appears in the movie.

• 12:40Linda Holmes?

  It, it, it did. I mean, I think Ayesha's face agrees with my face.

• 12:44Stephen Thompson?

  I mean, it's chaotic. It's chaotic, but I was there for it.

• 12:47Linda Holmes?

  No, I, I get that. I do think it kind of felt like one of those like Grammy moments where they, they

• 12:54Stephen Thompson?

  Oh, I love those. See, that's, okay.

• 12:57Aisha Harris?

  I don't know.

• 12:58Speaker 04

  I'm on Team Steven here.

• 12:59Aisha Harris?

  Yeah, it it just felt like, oh, we're gonna put all these people. And it's like, they they rush by so quickly. And like, none of them really got their proper due. So I just felt as though I would have loved to see more of Rafael Sadiq. I would have loved to see more of Buddy Guy. Like Buddy Guy, literally, the camera just like swoops past him. He, I don't even know if I heard him in that mix. Again, the sound was awful. But, yeah, I mean, they they did their best. And I thought the camera movement wasn't really my issue. Because I actually thought it was kind of cool to see those things happening. I just think maybe have one or two really famous people and then, because again, they felt underserved. But yeah, it's hard to recreate that, what works pretty well in a cinematic context for a live audience experience. So.

• 13:42Linda Holmes?

  Right. I think the onstage performance live at the Oscars with Not Good Sound certainly did not, to me, show you what was so great about the scene in the movie, but it maybe would remind you of what was so great about the scene in the movie.

• 13:57Stephen Thompson?

  Maybe that's all I needed. Maybe I just wanted to go back to that scene.

• 14:00Linda Holmes?

  And be like, you know, oh, yeah, I remember that. I saw the the stage thing as like an homage to the scene in the movie, rather than really being similar.

• 14:10Aisha Harris?

  Kind of the Cirque du Soleil version, you know?

• 14:13Linda Holmes?

  Exactly, exactly.

• 14:15Speaker 04

  I was all for it.

• 14:16Stephen Thompson?

  Well, speaking of things we are all for, best supporting actress went to Amy Madigan for her unforgettable role in the movie Weapons, a role that was so memorable, Conan O'Brien referenced it in the very opening skit of the telecast.

• 14:32Aisha Harris?

  That's true. Yes, he did. But yeah, I'm excited for Amy Madigan. You know, I I really thought Tiana Taylor was gonna gonna win this, and she didn't. I don't, I have my issues with the role. Yeah, I I love that we got a horror villain winning and a woman. And yes, like, this is exciting. I mean, again. These things are not symbolic. I also just found out today that she's married to Ed Harris. Where have I been? I don't know how I didn't know this, but-

• 15:01Linda Holmes?

  For a long, long time. For a very long time.

• 15:04Aisha Harris?

  That's cool. That's cool. I love it.

• 15:05Linda Holmes?

  I think my touchstone for this happening is like, if you had walked out of Weapons and said, "I think Amy Madigan is gonna win an Oscar for playing Aunt Gladys," people would have really laughed at you, I think. Not because it's not great, but because who would have had that kind of faith in the Oscars?

• 15:26Aisha Harris?

  Right.

• 15:27Linda Holmes?

  Yeah. And yet, here we are.

• 15:29Speaker 04

  And once again, just that acceptance speech was what I want from an actor, acceptance speech. It was fumbling, but sincere, and you know, it was not too actor-y. I think if anybody's gonna dig Jessie Buckley's acceptance speech, they could say it had a very practiced actorly effusiveness. I could be wrong, your mileage may vary, but this felt like it was coming from a place of actual surprise and delight, and that's always good to see.

• 15:53Linda Holmes?

  Agreed.

• 15:53Speaker 10

  This is great.

• 15:57Speaker 10

  Everybody's asking me in the press and all this, well, it's been 40 years, and you know, what's different about this time? This is different, it's got this little gold guy.

• 16:07Stephen Thompson?

  I also want to throw a quick shout out to Tiana Taylor, who was, I think in many quarters, favored to win that award, and was maybe my favorite audience member to watch over the course of that telecast, was enormously enthusiastic, enormously gracious, extremely excited about Amy Madigan, who just beat her.

• 16:28Aisha Harris?

  She stood up, yeah.

• 16:29Stephen Thompson?

  Really want to see more from her. She pops up in that Ben Affleck, Matt Damon Netflix rip movie-

• 16:34Linda Holmes?

  Which I liked, which I liked.

• 16:35Stephen Thompson?

  From like January. So like, more Tiana Taylor in everything. She was a big winner, even if she didn't win that award. Glenn mentioned Jessie Buckley a second ago. She won Best Actress in a Leading Role for Hamlet. This felt wire to wire.

• 16:50Linda Holmes?

  Yes.

• 16:51Stephen Thompson?

  Like she was always gonna win this.

• 16:52Linda Holmes?

  Yes, I agree. Yeah, I think there were moments when it felt like it might be Rose Byrne, for "If I Had Legs, I'd Kick You," which I think is an astonishing performance. But yeah, listen, some- Sometimes there's a movie and people decide this is the award it's going to get. It's a very awardsy movie. It involves a lot of people we like. In this case, Khloe Zhao, Jessie Buckley, Paul Meskall.

• 17:12Stephen Thompson?

  Max Richter doing the score.

• 17:13Linda Holmes?

  What we're going to give it is Jessie Buckley for lead actress. I agree with you, Stephen. I think it was pretty much predetermined. I like her. I've liked her in other things. Sure.

• 17:23Aisha Harris?

  Linda, you said it. I have nothing to add.

• 17:25Speaker 04

  Yeah. And as I said before, if this movie works on you, it works because of her. So.

• 17:29Linda Holmes?

  Exactly. I think that's right. Yeah, I think that's right.

• 17:31Speaker 11

  It's Mother's Day in the UK today.

• 17:38Speaker 11

  So I would like to dedicate this to the beautiful chaos of a mother's heart.

• 17:45Stephen Thompson?

  And I gotta say, between this and The Bride, Jessie Buckley is willing to go feral. In performance. And she's absolutely feral in this. One of the other big winners of the night, K-pop Demon Hunters won for animated feature film and original song for Golden. Definitely two fields in which I think it was pretty heavily favored, though there was a sense that That I Lied to You from Sinners was kind of sneaking up on Golden. Ultimately, it was kind of a coronation for this film. And not for nothing, the first time a K-pop song has ever won an Oscar.

• 18:20Aisha Harris?

  Yeah, I'm happy about this, but also can we talk about that performance? Because we talked about the Sinner's performance being a little chaotic. I wanted more chaos from this performance. Like I.

• 18:33Stephen Thompson?

  I just wanted it to be longer. It did like verse, chorus, coda.

• 18:37Aisha Harris?

  This is not to say anything about the performers. I thought the performers were giving it their all.

• 18:49Stephen Thompson?

  EJ, Audrey Nuna, and Ray Ami, you know, were on pitch with Bad Sound.

• 18:53Speaker 04

  A very demanding song.

• 18:54Aisha Harris?

  Yes.

• 18:55Stephen Thompson?

  A very, very, very demanding song.

• 18:57Aisha Harris?

  Yeah, I just wanted more going on in the production, to be honest. I wanted it to like be more like a Broadway production, but that is what it is.

• 19:05Stephen Thompson?

  You're talking about one of the biggest pop cultural phenomena of 2025. And like the Oscars were kind of hawking that performance over the course of the night. It didn't happen until almost three full hours into the telecast. And I'm just thinking, all those, those little kids begging their parents to let them stay up and watch them perform Golden. And then having it pop up at, you know, if you're on Eastern time at 10 o'clock at night. Why, I just don't understand why you don't lead with that performance and blow it out.

• 19:36Linda Holmes?

  I just wanted to make sure that the kids got to hear all of the Conan O'Brien monologue and.

• 19:42Stephen Thompson?

  Lots and lots of skits.

• 19:44Linda Holmes?

  All of the things that are really good for kids, like the in memoriam and stuff like that, you know?

• 19:50Stephen Thompson?

  Well, we wanted to run through some other winners from Oscar night. Sentimental Value got shut out in a lot of categories, but it did win international feature. That film is from Norway. Any thoughts?

• 20:02Aisha Harris?

  I would have loved to see The Secret Agent win this. I think it's a great movie. But Sentimental Value was also really good. I really liked it. So I was happy about that.

• 20:11Linda Holmes?

  If you like a family drama, it's a family drama, you know?

• 20:15Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 20:15Linda Holmes?

  And I think a very solid one.

• 20:17Stephen Thompson?

  It's a very good family drama. I mean, it's not an accident that four different performances from that film got nominated in the acting categories. It is very hard to pull that off.

• 20:26Linda Holmes?

  Is it an accident that you said it's an accident when they beat It Was Just An Accident? Or?

• 20:32Linda Holmes?

  Oh, no, you didn't do that on purpose. That was just an accident.

• 20:35Stephen Thompson?

  That was just an accident.

• 20:37Linda Holmes?

  Did we mention what time of night it is?

• 20:41Stephen Thompson?

  All right, let's talk technical awards briefly. Frankenstein won for costume design, makeup and hairstyling, and production design. And then visual effects went to Avatar: Fire and Ash. And F1 won for sound, which means F1 has more Academy Awards than Marty Supreme, which had nine nominations.

• 21:04Speaker 04

  Was there a surprise in this mix? I wasn't surprised by anything, any of these.

• 21:07Linda Holmes?

  I wasn't surprised either. I've been talking about the red veil that happens early in Frankenstein ever since I saw that movie. I think it's really striking. You know, obviously, we can keep beating the drum of like, I loved sinners in a bunch of these categories also. But I am perfectly happy with Frankenstein. Like, listen, Guillermo del Toro is a way of putting teams together that make really cool looking stuff. If his film is the one that's going to bring a bunch of design stuff home, seems fine.

• 21:35Aisha Harris?

  You're here.

• 21:36Stephen Thompson?

  It was really telling when that film won for makeup and hairstyling and one of the winners paused and had a long hug with Jacob Elordi.

• 21:43Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 21:43Stephen Thompson?

  Like, that is a relationship fueled by fire.

• 21:48Speaker 04

  400 hours in the chair.

• 21:52Stephen Thompson?

  There was also a tie in the live action short category. That is only the seventh time there has ever been a tie at the Oscars. Those awards went to the singers and two people exchanging saliva. Mr. Nobody Against Putin won for documentary feature, which was something of an upset. Documentary short went to All The Empty Rooms and The Girl Who Cried Pearls won in the animated short category. So let's get to the telecast. This ceremony had a lot of things for a lot of people, a lot of highs and a lot of lows. I'm going to start us off with general observations about the telecast and say, I am so glad that in the acting categories, they showed us clips instead of having these long droning

• 22:36Stephen Thompson?

  monologues about Timothy Chalamet. You made me think you were a ping pong champion. Just show us the clip.

• 22:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, it was, it was a pretty old school night. I mean, the opening montage where Conan runs literally through several nominated films. That's a Billy Crystal schtick. That goes back. The opening monologue, which a bunch of absolutely mid jokes. That's tradition too. Like the clips that you mentioned, Stephen, the presenter banter that was decidedly mid. Host jokes, a lot of them all went along a theme of like, this is, we're trying to reach out to the youngs. There were a lot of them, but they were short. They were like 30 seconds at most. That's good.

• 23:17Aisha Harris?

  Well, that was part of the joke, right? Cause we have no attention span if you're under the age of 25.

• 23:21Speaker 04

  That's the idea. Introducing the best picture nominees, not by having some actor come out and bloviate about what the film's about, but instead just coming back from commercial and then going straight into the monologue with no intros. You know how much time we saved by that? If you consider those intros are maybe what 15, 30 seconds? If there's 10 movies, that's still a lot of time that it's wasted, utterly wasted. They didn't do it this year. I'm pleased with that.

• 23:45Stephen Thompson?

  They could in the future, take that time they save and not cut people off.

• 23:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 23:51Stephen Thompson?

  And let people finish their speeches. Like, for example, if you win best original song and you're the first ever K-pop Oscar winner and the second person starts to speak and you slam into the orchestra in one of the rudest playoffs I've ever seen. I was so, I was really. Angry.

• 24:08Linda Holmes?

  Well, one of your collaborators is basically jumping up and down over to the side, trying to get them to let you talk, which.

• 24:15Aisha Harris?

  Yeah. Well, I'm glad that that person did just keep going. And that time, the orchestra backed off a little. But then there's another time when someone else got an award and they got cut off completely.

• 24:26Linda Holmes?

  There was one when they did and one when they didn't.

• 24:28Aisha Harris?

  I absolutely agree with you. I also, even though it became sort of like the running gag of the night, and it got old very quickly, I did, I did find it quite amusing how Timmy Chalamet just kept coming. He was the punching bag of the night. Him and Trump were like the punching bag for very different reasons, obviously. But of course, there was this clip that went around from this Town Hall interview he did with Matthew McConaughey, where Timmy Chalamet is saying like, he wants to keep movie theaters alive and how he doesn't want to be working in ballet or opera. Things that, as he says, no one cares about anymore. You know, there were a lot of jokes. They were beaten dead, but I did find it kind of amusing because, you know.

• 25:11Linda Holmes?

  Well, and the sound was a constant problem all evening. And I will grant you, this is a really complex, lots of moving parts, sort of engineering feat, I am sure. But it was roof.

• 25:24Stephen Thompson?

  Well, and one section where the sound suffering kind of meant the most was in, I think, an otherwise pretty impressive in memoriam package. You know, unfortunately, as always, we lost a lot of really, really great people in the last year. They had a lot of ground to cover. And I think they largely did so in elegant fashion. But at one point, Barbra Streisand is talking about Robert Redford. And, you know, they worked together on The Way We Were, and then she sang some of the song, The Way We Were.

• 26:09Stephen Thompson?

  Man, when you don't have adequate sound for an extremely rare performance by Barbra Streisand, who is largely retired from performing publicly, and it sounds sort of muddy and garbled, that's really frustrating.

• 26:23Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 26:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, and here's the part where I need to take the temperature of my friends who have actual human emotions, just to check myself. I need a temperature check because in the in memoriam segment, we started with a tribute to Rob Reiner's by Billy Crystal. Then we got a reel of a bunch of people. Then we got Rachel McAdams doing a bit of Catherine O'Hara and then going all in on Diane Keaton, then more real. And we think it's ending. And we think it's ending because we get a scene from The Way We Were with Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand, and it's a scene where they're hugging. But what's odd is the last shot of that reel is over Robert Redford's shoulder. So we see, we have a full shot of Barbra Streisand's face, and you're like, what's going on here?

• 27:02Stephen Thompson?

  I was like, Barbra Streisand is still alive.

• 27:04Linda Holmes?

  Well, yeah, but it's because they were bringing her out.

• 27:07Speaker 04

  And then, then you realize that they're bringing her out. That's why they do it. But I need to check in with you. Did the fact that, A, we are picking certain people to pull out from this as opposed to just giving them extra like screen time, picking certain people to pull out from feel a little weird? And then, did it feel, and contain your shock, did it feel that maybe Barbra Streisand was centering herself in a way?

• 27:28Stephen Thompson?

  Definitely what you say.

• 27:29Speaker 04

  Or do people just do that in eulogies? And I'm just being weird?

• 27:33Aisha Harris?

  I mean, look, the sad truth of life and living and death is that some people mean more than others. Let's just be real. This is the way it was. Or they mean more to more people than others.

• 27:45Linda Holmes?

  That's what it is. They're known to more people.

• 27:47Aisha Harris?

  I don't find it surprising, especially concerning who those three people they chose to single out. I don't find it surprising at all that those people got those moments. It's tricky, right? Because there's always, every year, there's like, they left this person out. Like, you can't cover all of it. And I think considering the way previous in memoriam have gone. Which is usually way more like kind of messy in different ways where it's like we're gonna center the person who's singing on stage as opposed to actually centering the people who died. To me, this is the best in a more that the award ceremony has done in my memory. So I, I, I thought it was very lovely.

• 28:29Aisha Harris?

  I thought it was sweet and sound problems aside, and especially the moment where they brought up a bunch of people who had worked with Rob Reiner at the end of his sort of sequence. And I just thought that was really lovely to see all of those people there.

• 28:43Stephen Thompson?

  I thought that was particularly lovely in part because that brings you back around to paying tribute to these movies. Bringing out those casts and having that feeling of like, oh, my gosh, that's like a little Spinal Tap reunion and a little Stand By Me reunion and a little, you know, it's bringing the audience in and kind of celebrating the person's legacy and filmography in a lovely way. I agree. I thought this was, for, for the most part, I thought that was a lovely segment that sometimes really does not get done particularly well in award shows.

• 29:14Linda Holmes?

  Yeah. And I do think, Glenn, in terms of, I wondered too about picking particular people out and sort of doing special segments on them because like, why do you do Robert Redford but you don't do Robert Duvall? Like, how do you make those decisions? I did think about the fact, not as much with Robert Redford, but particularly with Rob Reiner, with Catherine O'Hara and with Diane Keaton. I think those are all maybe ones that people did not see coming as much. And so I think they were all, obviously, Rob Reiner died by violence, it's a different thing. But I think that people maybe were, didn't process those deaths in quite the same way as somebody who's been retired from acting for a super long time and has been, you know,

• 29:58Linda Holmes?

  you knew they were perhaps close to the end of their life. I wondered if that was part of it, that those deaths were ones that they felt people were perhaps taking particularly hard. But that's total speculation on, on my part about the thinking.

• 30:12Stephen Thompson?

  Before we wrap up, I wanted to take y'alls temperature about Conan O'Brien as the host. I mean, I think it felt like they leaned on some pre-produced bits a little bit more. What did y'all think of Conan?

• 30:25Linda Holmes?

  I think Conan is a experienced host who I think is always a perfect, and this is gonna sound mean, and I don't mean it that way. I think Conan is always a perfectly fine event host. I mean, Conan has always been a little weirder than a lot of other people. So to me, it was like, I think he was right in the pocket of how Oscar's hosting is, which is that it is somewhat thankless, but I think he tends to remain very game. I think he had a couple of nice moments where he tried to stick up for people who got their microphones cut off. I think he's a gracious host.

• 31:01Speaker 04

  Game is also a magic word there. I mean, like, you want somebody to commit to the bit. You want somebody to go full ham, you get Conan O'Brien. He's not gonna hold himself apart from the proceedings, the way that great hosts in the past have done, like Steve Martin. I think he was a great host. I also think he, his persona was above it all.

• 31:16Linda Holmes?

  Johnny Carson.

• 31:17Speaker 04

  Johnny Carson. I think Jimmy Kimmel also kind of holds himself apart. At the same time, he's not gonna dump all of everything the way that Nate Bargatze did at the Emmys. So, you know, I think it's a, it's a full-body commitment, and that's what you get from Conan O'Brien.

• 31:30Linda Holmes?

  Yeah. My favorite of his bits was the one with Sterling K. Brown.

• 31:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, that was the best one.

• 31:35Linda Holmes?

  Yeah, they were riffing on the reports from certain people in Hollywood that they're being told to rewrite, to write scripts and repeat information because people are two-screen experience, three-screen experience, whatever, they're not paying attention. So they did a bit with Casablanca, and of course Sterling K. Brown is playing Sam, and he's playing the Humphrey Bogart character, and it's, I enjoyed that.

• 32:00Speaker 12

  It definitely contributed to my overall cynicism, what with this being World War II and all.

• 32:08Speaker 12

  World War II. That's the Hitler one, right?

• 32:13Stephen Thompson?

  A welcome reminder that Sterling K. Brown is a funny dude.

• 32:15Aisha Harris?

  Yes, he is.

• 32:16Linda Holmes?

  Sure is.

• 32:16Aisha Harris?

  He's very funny.

• 32:17Stephen Thompson?

  You can put that guy in comedy and he'll crush it.

• 32:19Aisha Harris?

  Absolutely.

• 32:20Stephen Thompson?

  All right, well, we want to know what you think about this year's Oscars. Find us at facebook.com slash PCHH. That brings us to the end of our show. Linda Holmes, Aisha Harris, Glen Weldon, thanks so much for being here.

• 32:33Aisha Harris?

  Thank you.

• 32:34Stephen Thompson?

  Thank you.

• 32:34Linda Holmes?

  Thank you.

• 32:35Stephen Thompson?

  This episode was produced by Liz Metzger, Carly Rubin, and Mike Katzif, and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reed. Hello, Come In provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. If you're not already following the show, do that right now. I'm Stephen Thompson, and we will see you all next time.

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