Pop Culture Happy Hour - Our 2026 Oscars Recap

Episode Date: March 16, 2026

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 exp...ense. We’re recapping the highs and lows of the 2026 Oscars.See 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

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Starting point is 00:00:00 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. One battle after another, Michael B. Jordan, Jesse 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 Shalameh's expense. I'm Stephen Thompson. It is 1202 a.m., and we are recapping the highs and lows of this year's Oscars on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour. Joining me today are my fellow pop culture happy hour hosts, Linda Holmes. Hey, Linda. Hello, Stephen.
Starting point is 00:00:59 Aisha Harris. How's it going? Viva La Revolution, Stephen. They showed that quite a few times. Brian Weldon, hey buddy. Hey, pal. All right, we're going to get right to it. Biggest winner of the night, six Academy Awards,
Starting point is 00:01:12 one battle after another, won 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 Kundi's,
Starting point is 00:01:25 and the film also won for editing. What did you all think? 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. 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. And, you know, I recognize some very good performances in there.
Starting point is 00:02:09 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, do. And I do not begrudge him his Oscars. 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 going to present it.
Starting point is 00:02:33 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. Right. 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.
Starting point is 00:02:57 It really worked. Well, I think there's also a difference between when those tongue baths are given to people like act. who tend to get a lot of tongue baths. Yeah. And when they are 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.
Starting point is 00:03:20 And honestly, if you go look up the resumes for all the people who are nominated, casting directors have the most fascinating resumes. Oh, yeah. 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. 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. 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.
Starting point is 00:04:16 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 front runners, you know, directed by kind of powerhouse directors. And it really kind of came down to those two films. ultimately this race felt kind of similar.
Starting point is 00:05:02 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 no country for old men. It's not like either of these films is likely to be memory hold anytime soon. Well, getting the statuette is zero sum, but having your movie be beloved is not zero some. 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. Fascinating. All right. Well, next up, Sinners won for four Oscars.
Starting point is 00:05:40 Ryan Coogler, won for Best Original Screenplay. Michael B. Jordan, won for actor in a leading role. If only somebody had predicted that. Autumn Dorald Arquipaugh won for cinematography. She is the first woman to win in this category. and Ludwig Gorensen won for score. What did you think of the role, you know, sinners played in this telecast? I mean, look, I've beat this horse dead at this point.
Starting point is 00:06:07 I don't care, and yet I was so ecstatic. Estatic 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. Thank you, everybody in this room and everybody at home for supporting me over my career.
Starting point is 00:06:33 I feel it. I know you guys want me to do well, and I want to do that because you guys bet on me. So thank you for keeping them, for keep betting on me. I don't think symbolically this means much at all. I think these awards, especially for, you know, people of color, it's great for them.
Starting point is 00:06:51 I'm happy for them, but it doesn't actually concretely mean that anything is, 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. And then his whole entire career, the way that Ryan Cooleur 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 Cooleur didn't wind up
Starting point is 00:07:24 winning best director or best picture. 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 Mahershal Ali has won twice as well. And I think Ryan Cougler, 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. Yeah, and that archipa-paw win for cinematography, I'm going to make the case it was the best acceptance speech of the night. One of the best
Starting point is 00:08:06 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. 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. That was such a classy move. That was such a great moment. Absolutely.
Starting point is 00:08:47 I think it's very difficult when you win to be like, the fact that I just won is historic, right? 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.
Starting point is 00:09:27 And what an incredibly, again, richly deserved award for somebody who not only has done such great work in future 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. 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.
Starting point is 00:10:16 Miles Caiton performed at Raphael Sadiq, who co-wrote the song, was part of the performance. on stage by Buddy Guy and Brittany Howard from the Alabama Shakes and Shiboozy and Alice Smith and Bobby Rush. And, you know, you get like, you get like three seconds of Shibuzi and you know, that's Shibuzi. And Misty Copeland dancing. Mr. 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.
Starting point is 00:11:03 It did. I mean, I think Aisha's face agrees with my face. I mean, it's chaotic. It's chaotic, but I was there for it. No, I get that. I do think it kind of felt like one of those, like, Grammy moments where they, they kidding. Oh, I love those. See, that's the thing.
Starting point is 00:11:20 Okay. Yeah, I don't know. Team Stephen here. Yeah, it just felt like, oh, we're going to put all these people. And it's like 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 Raphael Sadiq. I would have loved to see more of Buddy Guy. Like, Buddy Guy literally, the camera just like swoops past him.
Starting point is 00:11:37 He checked like, I don't even know if I heard him in that mix. Again, the sound was awful. But yeah, I mean, 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 right i think the on stage performance live at the oscars with not good sound certainly did not to me show you what was
Starting point is 00:12:15 so great about the scene in the movie but it maybe would remind you of what was so great up the scene and maybe that's all i needed maybe i just wanted you maybe i just wanted you wanted to go back to that scene. And be like, you know, oh, yeah, I remember that. I saw the stage thing as, like, an homage to the scene in the movie rather than really being similar. Kind of the Cirque du Soleil version, you know. Exactly. Exactly.
Starting point is 00:12:39 I was all for it. 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. That's true. Yes, he did. But yeah, I'm excited for Amy Madigan. You know, I really thought Tiana Taylor was going to win this, and she didn't.
Starting point is 00:13:05 I don't, I have my issues with the role. Yeah, 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. Like, I also just found out today that she's married to Ed Harris. Where have I met? I don't know how I didn't know this, but... For a long, long time.
Starting point is 00:13:26 That's cool. That's cool. I love it. Absolutely. I think my touchstone for this happening is, like, if you had walked out of weapons and said, I think Amy Madigan is going to win an Oscar for playing Aunt Glottis, 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, right?
Starting point is 00:13:51 And yet, here we are. 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 actory. I think if anybody's going to dig, Jesse Buckley's acceptance speech, they could say it had a very practiced actorly effusiveness. I could be wrong. Your mileage may vary.
Starting point is 00:14:12 But this felt like it was coming from a place of actual surprise and delight. And that's always good to see. Agreed. This is great. Everybody's asking me in the press it all this well. It's been 40 years. And, you know, what's different about this time? This is different.
Starting point is 00:14:29 It's got this little gold guy. 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. She stood up, yeah. Really want to see more from her. She pops up in that Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Netflix, Rip movie from like, which I like.
Starting point is 00:14:59 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 Jesse Buckley a second ago. She won Best Actress in a leading role for Hamnet. This felt wire to wire. Yes. Like she was always going to win this.
Starting point is 00:15:16 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, 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, Chloe Zhao, Jesse Buckley, Paul Mescal. Max Richter, doing the score.
Starting point is 00:15:37 What we're going to give it is Jesse Buckley. Buckley for lead actress. I agree with you, Stephen. I think it was pretty much predetermined. I like her. I've liked her and other things. Sure. Linda, you said it.
Starting point is 00:15:48 I have nothing to add. Yeah, and as I said before, if this movie works on you, it works because of her. Exactly. I think that's right. Yeah, I think that's right. It's Mother's Day in the UK today. So I would like to dedicate this
Starting point is 00:16:04 to the beautiful chaos of a mother's heart. And I've got to say, between this and the bride, Jesse Buckley is willing to go feral. in performance. Absolutely. And she's absolutely feral in this. One of the other
Starting point is 00:16:19 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,
Starting point is 00:16:31 though there was a sense 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 awesome.
Starting point is 00:16:43 Yeah. I'm happy about this, but also can we talk about that performance? Because we talked about the sinners' performance being a little chaotic. I wanted more chaos from this performance. Like, I just wanted it to be longer. Yeah. It did like verse, chorus, Coda. This is not to say anything about the performers. I thought the performers were giving it at their all. E.J. Audrey Nuna and Ray Ami were on pitch with bad sound. A very demanding song. a very, very, very demanding song. 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. 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
Starting point is 00:17:42 all 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. They just wanted to make sure that the kids got to hear all of the Conan O'Brien monologue and lots and lots of skits. All of the things that are really good for kids, like the in-memorium and stuff like that, you know. Well, we wanted to run through some other winners from Oscar Knight's Sentimental.
Starting point is 00:18:18 Value got shut out in a lot of categories, but it did win international feature. That film is from Norway. Any thoughts? I would have loved to see The Secret Agent Witness. I think it's a great movie. But Sentimental Value was also really good. I really liked it. So I was happy about that.
Starting point is 00:18:35 If you like a family drama, it's a family drama, you know? Yeah. And I think a very solid one. 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. Is it an accident that you said it's an accident when they beat? It was just an accident?
Starting point is 00:18:54 Or? Oh, no, you didn't do that on purpose. That was just an accident. That was just an accident. Did we mention what time of night it is? All right, let's talk technical awards briefly. Frankenstein won for costume design, makeup and hair styling, and production design. And then visual effects went to Avatar, Fire, and Ash.
Starting point is 00:19:16 and F1 won for sound, which means F1 has more Academy Awards than Marty Supreme, which had nine nominations. Vroom, boom, furm, it's true. Was there a surprise in this mix? I wasn't surprised by anything, any of these. 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 being the drum of like I loved sinners in a bunch of these categories also. but I'm perfectly happy with Frankenstein. Like, listen, Guillermo del Toro is a way of putting teams together that make really cool looking stuff.
Starting point is 00:19:54 If his film is the one that's going to bring a bunch of design stuff home, seems fine. Here, here. It was really telling when that film won for makeup and hair styling and one of the winners paused and had a long hug with Jacob Allorty. Yeah. Like, that is a relationship fueled by fire. 400 hours in the chair.
Starting point is 00:20:13 Yeah. 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.
Starting point is 00:20:43 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 monologues about Timothy Shalame, you made me think you were a ping pong champion. Just show us the clip. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was a pretty old school night.
Starting point is 00:21:13 I mean, the opening montage where Conan runs literally through several nominated films, that's a Billy Crystal Stig. 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.
Starting point is 00:21:41 Well, that was part of the joke, right? because we have no attention span if you're under the age of 25. That's the idea. Introducing the Best Picture nominees, not by having some actor come out and bloviate about what this 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 or maybe, what, 15 and 30 seconds,
Starting point is 00:22:02 if there's 10 movies, that's still a lot of time. It's wasted, utterly wasted. They didn't do that, you see her. I'm pleased with that. They could, in the future, take that time they save, and not cut people off 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,
Starting point is 00:22:29 I was so, I was really angry. Well, one of your collaborators is basically jumping up and down over to the side trying to get them to let you talk, which, you know. 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. There was one when they did and one when they didn't. 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 find it quite amusing how Timmy Chalame just kept coming. He was the punching bag of the night. Him and Trump were like the punching bag for
Starting point is 00:23:09 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 is saying, like, he wants to keep movie the ears 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. 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 feet, I am sure. But it was roof. Well, and one section where the sound suffering kind of meant the most was in, I think, an otherwise pretty impressive in memoriam package.
Starting point is 00:23:58 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, Barbara Streisand is talking about Robert Redford. And, you know, they work together on the way we were. And then she sang some of the song, the way we were. When you don't have adequate sound for an extremely rare performance by Barbara Streisand, who is largely retired from performing publicly, and it sounds sort of muddy and garbled,
Starting point is 00:24:45 that's really frustrating. 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-memorium 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 McCadams 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 Barbara Streisand.
Starting point is 00:25:15 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 Barbus Streisand's face. And you're like, what's going on here? I was like, Barbus Trisand is still a lot. Well, yeah, but it's because they were bringing her out. And 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 a lot from feel a little weird. And then did it feel, and contain your shock,
Starting point is 00:25:47 did it feel that maybe Barbara Streisand was centering herself in a way? Look, devil you say. Or do people just do that in eulogies and I'm just being weird. 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. That's what it is.
Starting point is 00:26:09 They're known to more people. Sure. 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 they let, like, you can't cover all of it. And I think considering the way previous in memoriams have gone, which is usually way more like kind of messy in different ways where it's like we're going to center the person who's singing on stage as opposed to actually
Starting point is 00:26:43 centering the people who died. To me, this is the best in a morium that the award ceremony has done in my memory. So I thought it was very lovely. I thought it was sweet and sound problems aside. And especially the moment where they brought out 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. 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
Starting point is 00:27:19 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 the most part, I thought that was a lovely segment that sometimes really does not get done particularly well in awards shows. And I do think, Glenn, in terms of, I wondered to about picking
Starting point is 00:27:42 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 Duval? 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, 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
Starting point is 00:28:30 were perhaps taking particularly hard. But that's total speculation on my part about the thinking. Before we wrap up, I wanted to take y'all's 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? I think Conan is a experienced host who I think is always a perfect, and this is going to 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.
Starting point is 00:29:11 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. 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.
Starting point is 00:29:32 He's not going to 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. Johnny Carson. Johnny Carson. I think Jimmy Kimmel also kind of holds himself apart. At the same time, he's not going to dump all over everything the way that Nate Brigatsy did at the Emmys. So, you know, I think it's a full body commitment. And that's what you get from Conan O'Brien. Yeah. My favorite of his bits was the one with Sterling K. Brown. Yeah. That was the best one.
Starting point is 00:29:59 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. It definitely contributed to my overall cynicism,
Starting point is 00:30:28 but with this being World War II and all. World War II. That's the Hitler one, right? Welcome reminder that Sterling K. Brown is a funny dude. Yes, he is. He's very funny. You can put that guy in comedy, and he'll crush it.
Starting point is 00:30:43 Absolutely. All right. Well, we want to know what you think about this year's Oscars. Find us at Facebook.com slash PCHH.
Starting point is 00:30:51 That brings us to the end of our show, Linda Holmes, Aisha Harris, Glenn Weldon. Thanks so much for being here. Thank you. Thank you.
Starting point is 00:30:59 This episode was produced by Liz Metzker, Carly Rubin, and Mike Katzif, and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reed. Hello, Come In, provides our theme music.
Starting point is 00:31:08 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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