Jimmy Kimmel Says ‘Barbie’ Convinced Him to Host the Oscars Again
The late night comedian returns as a back-to-back host of the Academy Awards this year, after leading the ceremony in 2023.
Jimmy Kimmel didn’t think he’d ever return to the Oscars stage, the late night comedian said this week. What changed his mind? Barbie.
“I did not think I would ever do it again,” Kimmel told the Los Angeles Times. He first hosted the Academy Awards in 2017, when La La Land was accidentally announced as best picture instead of Moonlight. He returned in 2018 and then again last 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.’”
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Kimmel said part of the difficulty of hosting the Oscars comes from speaking about movies that his audience hasn’t seen. 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.”
Though he thought that would be the end of it, Barbie left him with the same feeling for the 2024 ceremony. “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. He is now the fourth-most-frequent Academy Awards host in history, behind Bob Hope (19), Billy Crystal (nine) and Johnny Carson (five). Kimmel’s wife and Jimmy Kimmel Live! co-head writer Molly McNearney is also an executive producer for the telecast.
The 96th Oscars will air live at 4 p.m. PT on ABC, on Sunday, March 10, 2024, from the Dolby Theatre.
