Can Conan O’Brien save the Oscars?

It is hard to think of the last time that the Academy Awards had a great host. Jimmy Kimmel did a competent job in 2023 and earlier this year, and was fortunate to sit out the notorious ceremony in 2022 in which Will Smith marched on stage to slap Chris Rock. Yet it’s impossible to remember anything really entertaining that Kimmel did or said — unlike his first time hosting in 2017, when the event fell apart in Curb Your Enthusiasm-esque chaos when La La Land was wrongly announced to have won Best Picture when in fact Moonlight had — and it’s no wonder that he didn’t want to return for a fifth go for next year’s ceremony.

Many estimable comedians and chat show hosts have tried, and failed, to make their mark at the Oscars. The likes of Jon Stewart, Neil Patrick Harris and Chris Rock have all underwhelmed, and this is before we get to the out-and-out disasters like Seth MacFarlane and James Franco, whose names should live in infamy. Therefore, it came as something of a surprise that next year’s host at the ceremony will not be, as rumored, the Deadpool & Wolverine duo of Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman, but instead none other than Conan O’Brien.

When the news was announced, O’Brien quipped that, “America demanded it and now it’s happening: Taco Bell’s new Cheesy Chalupa Supreme. In other news, I’m hosting the Oscars.” He is an inspired choice. As the show’s executive producers Raj Kapoor and Katy Mullan said in a statement, “Conan has all the qualities of a great Oscars host — he is incredibly witty, charismatic and funny and has proven himself to be a master of live event television. We are so looking forward to working with him to deliver a fresh, exciting and celebratory show for Hollywood’s biggest night.” Similar remarks have been made virtually every year, but, this time round, they might just be correct.

Next year’s Academy Awards comes with obvious pitfalls. Although we’re about to head into the Gladiator-Wicked box office behemoth season, last year’s actors’ strike meant that there have been far fewer pictures released in 2024 than usual, which has resulted in fewer award-worthy films competing for prizes. Although it isn’t a complete drought in the same way that 2021 was, when a mere 5.9 million people watched Nomadland win Best Picture, it certainly isn’t as competitive as last year, although Oppenheimer’s march to victory was pre-ordained from practically the moment that it first screened.

In other words, the ceremony needs a spectacularly able host to make the event unmissable, and O’Brien, a polished, confident and endlessly charismatic performer, is exactly the right person to have tapped. His opening monologue, especially, should be on a par with the Billy Crystal-Whoopi Goldberg highlights of the Nineties: a decade in which the Oscars were required viewing for as many as 55 million people when Titanic won.

There is also another consideration. O’Brien is a witty and endlessly self-deprecating presence, but he is not seen as a provocative figure like Stewart, having said on previous occasions that, “I am just not a political comedian… that is something that I have always stayed away from.” A few months into the new Trump administration, and with actors and directors certain to make politically charged, inevitably controversial attacks on the president, O’Brien might seem like a safe pair of hands. Still, he himself has lambasted Trump in the past, saying in 2020 that, “You do not have to be an ethicist to know that this president has completely undermined the norms of human behavior. As a dad, I’m embarrassed, and I have said several times to my kids, ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry that this is the president that you’ve got.’”

Next year’s Oscars, then, has the most exciting host it’s hired for years. But will he be milquetoast on the night, or will there be bite beneath the grin? All will be revealed in a few months.