Host Jimmy Kimmel did not shy away from discussing last year’s infamous slap at the 95th Academy Awards.
“If anyone in this theater commits an act of violence at any point in the show, you will be awarded the Oscar for Best Actor and permitted to give a 19-minute-long speech,” he told the audience.
He further joked “Five Irish actors are nominated tonight, which means the odds of another fight on stage just went way up.”
Kimmel later claimed that the duo of actor Seth Rogan and director Steven Spielberg are like the “Joe and Hunter Biden of Hollywood.”
The comedian is hosting the ceremony for the third time on Sunday evening, previously doing so in 2017 and 2018.
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Prior to the ceremony, the late night host joked that “If somebody comes up on the stage and slaps me? Well, I size them up, and if I’m bigger than they are, I beat the s*** out of them on television, and if it’s the Rock, I run.”
Kimmel was poking fun at the most memorable part of 2022’s Academy Awards, when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock for making a joke about his wife, Jada Pinkett-Smith.
The academy hopes to avoid any similar incidents at the 95th awards show, with CEO of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Bill Kramer revealing that “crisis communication teams and structures” have been installed for that purpose.
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“Because of last year, we’ve opened our minds to the many things that can happen at the Oscars,” Kramer said in a recent interview.
“But these crisis plans — the crisis communication teams and structures we have in place — allow us to say this is the group that we have to gather very quickly,” he explained.
