Whereas this 12 months’s Oscar’s ceremony appeared to go off with no hitch, issues have been fairly actually up within the air for host Jimmy Kimmel till the final second. In an interview with Selection, Jimmy Kimmel Reside! government producer and Oscar author Molly McNearney—who’s additionally married to Kimmel—shared a number of behind-the-scenes tidbits concerning the present’s opening monologue, together with the genesis of Andrew Garfield’s now-famous grimace.
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In the course of the monologue, Kimmel joked that he had assembled a slap-proof “safety workforce” comprised of Michael B. Jordan, Pedro Pascal, Michelle Yeoh, Steven Spielberg, and Andrew Garfield. In accordance with McNearney, she personally knowledgeable all 5 stars that they’d be on digicam for the bit.
“We advised them minutes earlier than the present began, ‘you’re going to be on digicam, Jimmy’s going to discuss with you as a part of his safety workforce. In the event you may simply present some sort of bodily help or give him a fist bump,’” she mentioned. Everybody was ”sport and supportive,” mentioned McNearney, who made a specifically requested that Garfield do a Spider-Man internet sling gesture. Garfield, although, opted in opposition to that. “He made his personal selection. Which I believe was even higher,” she mentioned.
A unique superstar’s absence affected the monologue: Tom Cruise. McNearney advised Selection that when it was confirmed that Cruise can be skipping the Oscars as a way to proceed filming the following Mission Unimaginable, most of Kimmel’s Tom Cruise materials fell to the chopping room ground.
“We had a couple of three minute chunk of the monologue devoted to Tom Cruise, honoring him and his function in reviving the film trade,” McNearney mentioned. “We have been so disenchanted after we realized a couple of days earlier than the Oscars that he wouldn’t be there. Jimmy loves him and actually wished to have a good time him.” Kimmel did, nonetheless, take the chance to make a quick Scientology joke about Cruise, which McNearney mentioned he wouldn’t have carried out had Cruise been within the viewers.
One factor that Kimmel did not depart until the final minute have been identify pronunciations. “Jimmy is obsessive about announcing folks’s names accurately,” mentioned McNearney. “We at all times discover video of the individual saying their very own identify on digicam.” Because of this Kimmel pronounced Rihanna to rhyme with “banana,” fairly than utilizing an extended “a” vowel.
“That’s the approach you pronounce Rihanna. There’s an entire interview along with her about it,” mentioned McNearney. “Jimmy mentioned, ‘I need to name her the best way the identify that she calls herself.’ And that’s how she says it in Barbados. It felt humorous to folks. Now America is aware of the right way to pronounce her identify, though they received’t. They’ll simply assume Jimmy fucked up however no, he didn’t!”
