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Hosting the Academy Awards has already been proven to be one of Hollywood’s toughest gigs, but doing so in the wake of L.A.’s most catastrophic wildfires makes it even more challenging. Especially considering that it seems everyone has an opinion about how, why and if it should even proceed at all given the present circumstances.
But Conan O’Brien is up for the job. He’s also among the thousands of Angelenos that were forced to evacuate from their homes as the Palisades Fire and the Eaton Fire devastated the city, so he’s well aware of the sensitivities.
“It’s not the easiest assignment I’ve ever had but I’m embracing it. And it’s not about me, obviously. This is a moment for all of us to step back and say, ‘Be humble.’ Just be humble and say, ‘This is a massive moment. This is a terrible thing that’s happened in Los Angeles,’” O’Brien told The Hollywood Reporter on Friday afternoon after touching down at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. He’s in town promote his feature film acting debut in A24’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You opposite Rose Byrne.
The veteran host, podcaster and comedian has also seen the chatter online and how the devastation has been swept up by various factions of the fractured cultural landscape. “I know that people are politicizing it and yelling about it. It’s just a human tragedy,” continued O’Brien, who will be making his Oscar debut as a first-time host in a year of firsts for him. “We see these all the time, all around the world in our television sets, and then we go back and eat our turkey burger that just got delivered. I happen to live in the city now where something like this has happened. We’re all taking a moment to try and absorb it, and as an entertainer, I need to try and figure out what’s the best way to respond to this? So we will figure that out over the next five weeks, and it’ll probably come together 45 minutes before the show.”
Such is the way of comedy sometimes, and O’Brien said that he also knows that it’s a very fluid situation so they will be updating constantly as the days go by.
“The strategy is my writers and I and the team that I’m working with at the Oscars, who are fantastic, the producers, everyone, we’ve got all of our sensors out,” he explained. “I couldn’t tell you right now what the show is going to be. We have a million ideas, but which ones will we use? What’s going to be appropriate? What’s the right tone? Like I said, the tone might shift somewhat. You never know one way or the other. It’s a moving target. I want to make sure that we do the show that meets the moment on March 2, and that we put a light on a lot of the people in L.A. that have been affected; that we are a mixture of sensitive, but also understanding, but also I hope uplifting that there’s some fun. It’s a crazy combination.”
Speaking of crazy combinations, O’Brien could not wait to get inside the Library Center Theatre to see Mary Bronstein’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You which is described like this: “With her life crashing down around her, Linda (Byrne) attempts to navigate her child’s mysterious illness, her absent husband, a missing person and an increasingly hostile relationship with her therapist (O’Brien). Danielle Macdonald
Lark White, Ivy Wolk, Daniel Zolghadri, Delaney Quinn and rapper A$AP Rocky round out the cast.”
O’Brien said it would be his first time viewing the film because while he was offered a chance to take a pre-festival sneak peek, he passed because he’d rather experience it during the Sundance Film Festival. According to the film’s press notes, O’Brien received a call from Adam Sandler who suggested he connect with one of the Safdie brothers about the script. Bronstein’s husband, Ronald Bronstein, is close with the Safdies after having co-written their hit Uncut Gems. O’Brien then relayed to the filmmaker that he was in a “radical yes” phase of his career, which led him to the meaty part opposite Byrne.
THR asked him to name something he never knew about the acting profession until he finally found himself on set filming. “You need to know what you’re doing,” he said with a smile. “We prepare in comedy, but in my kind of comedy, you prepare, you prepare, you prepare and then you have to throw most of your plans out the window because you get into a situation and the interview takes a right turn and you go with the right turn. A lot of my favorite kind of comedy is accidents and things going off the rails. With acting it’s realizing that you need to know your mark, you need to know your lines. It’s a real job. I respected actors before, but watching Rose Byrne up close and watching what she can do and how brilliant she is, and I thought, I’m glad I interview them for a living. I’m really glad I don’t do it.”
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You premiered on Friday in Park City and will move on to the Berlin Film Festival next month. O’Brien will be seen fronting the Academy Awards on March 2.
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