Today in weird news, recent Oscars host Conan O’Brien revealed that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences refused to allow him and his team to clothe an Oscar statue or lay it horizontally for promotional ads they pitched for the ceremony. Uh, who knew the Academy was so stuffy?
Speaking on his Oscars head writer Mike Sweeney’s podcast Conan Needs a Friend, O’Brien set the scene: he pitched a series of ads in which he and a 9-foot tall Oscar statue were in a domestic partnership, but the Academy wasn’t exactly receptive to how he wanted to utilize the statue specifically.
“We’re fighting about things couples fight about,” O’Brien explained of one of his ideas. “At one point, I thought, wouldn’t it be great if it’s just on the couch? Let’s lay it on a really big couch and I’ll be vacuuming and say, ‘Could you at least lift your feet? Or could you at least get up and help? Load the dishwasher?’ We wanted to do it and they just said, ‘No, no no, that can’t happen.’ ”
For such a benign — and generally cute — idea, it doesn’t make a ton of sense as to why the Academy was so emphatic about not doing it. But it turns out they have a few super weird rules for their statue iconography.
“One of the people from the Academy came forward and said, ‘Oscar can never be horizontal.’ And that blew my mind,” O’Brien added. “Like, wow, this is like the thigh bone of St. Peter. This is a religious icon.” The comedian also noted on the podcast that the Academy reps also demanded that the statue is “always naked,” so their idea to have the statue serving O’Brien leftovers as an apron-clad housewife was also a no-go for the organization.
Again, there isn’t much sense in these decisions to the naked eye, but the Academy has a right to them all the same. Still, it’s a bummer we couldn’t see the full breadth of O’Brien’s comedic chops in these promos. Hopefully, he’ll come out of the gate with something equally as witty next year — and yes, we’re Team Conan Oscar Host 2026.
Photo by Patrick T. Fallon / AFP via Getty Images.
Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.
