With just under four months left until the 96th Oscars gala, without even having any nominees, the awards already have a presenter. It will be, once again, the comedian Jimmy Kimmel, as confirmed by the Academy in a statement. When he completes his task on March 10, Kimmel, a 56-year-old New Yorker, will have been on stage up to four times to present the Oscars, and he will also do so in pairs: he was the host this past March 2023 and also in the 2017 and 2018 ceremonies.
“I have always dreamed of presenting the Oscars on exactly four occasions,” Kimmel joked in the statement sent by the Academy, signed by its president, producer Janet Yang, and by its general director, Bill Kramer. They have also explained that Molly McNearney will repeat as producer, just like in 2023 and in 2017 and 2018. Kimmel and McNearney have been a professional couple for two decades, because she is the producer and co-writer of The Jimmy Kimmel Showthe comedian’s comedy show, which has been on the air since 2003. But they are also personal: they have been married for 10 years and have two children.
McNearney also wanted to say a few words, which clearly indicate where the fears of the Academy and the entire Hollywood film sector were going: “I feel especially honored to be part of this year’s Oscars team, when we are all anxious for getting back together and working again.” The producer was spot on. The writers’ strike, which took place between the beginning of May and the end of September, for 148 days; and that of actors, between mid-July and which ended on November 9, with 118 days of strikes, have left the sector trembling, with losses of 6,000 million dollars in California alone and an industry that did not know if it would make it alive to awards season. Now that it has been proven that yes, they are putting all their efforts to make up for lost time and give wide promotion to the films that will go to the Oscars, among which names like Oppenheimer, The Moon Killers, Barbie, Poor Things, Saltburn either Teacher. Spain has presented The Snow Society as a possible candidate; Mexico has opted for Totem.
Kimmel and McNearney achieved good viewership numbers in 2017 and 2018, which dropped in 2019 and in subsequent years, during the pandemic; Hence the Academy decided to have them again for the last edition. And with success: they achieved 18.8 million viewers, 13% more than the previous year, and with data that doubles that of the Emmys or the Grammys. The presenter usually has a lot to do with those figures. In the case of Kimmel — who has won the Emmy Award twice, for which he has been nominated 20 times — he has a quick and non-aggressive humor that dazzles audiences. He was the one who, in 2017, dealt with the fiasco of the wrong best picture envelope, when Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty read that it was for La La Land but finally the winner was moonlight. She learned from that. As she said shortly before presenting the 2018 ones, “the host has to stay aside, the audience is not there for you.” “This year when you hear your name, don’t get up, wait a little,” she joked at the beginning of that second ceremony that she conducted.
Thanks to this fourth commission, Kimmel catches up with Whoopi Goldberg and Jack Lemmon in terms of number of appearances, although they are surpassed by Johnny Carson with five, and especially Billy Crystal with nine and Bob Hope with 11. From the Dolby Theater in Hollywood, in Los Ángeles, Kimmel and McNearney will be the tandem in charge of taking the world’s most important film awards gala to more than 200 countries, as they did last year, in a ceremony that earned them both an Emmy nomination. “We are excited to have Jimmy return to host and Molly return to produce the Oscars. They share our love for cinema and our goal of producing a dynamic and entertaining show for a global audience,” said those in charge of the Academy. “We are deeply grateful to Jimmy, Molly and their teams for their incredible creativity and partnership, and for jumping on the bandwagon with us again.”
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