It says a lot about the state of the Oscars in general that, on a night when a bear on cocaine attacked the noted activist Malala Yousafzai in her seat on live television, last night’s ceremony went down as one of the most incident-free of recent years. Indeed, it seems like the only enduring non-award talking point of the night was Hugh Grant being a bit awkward on the red carpet.
You will have seen the clip by now. Grant stands on the carpet with his hands on his hips, looking more like an exasperated bank manager than a movie star, barely tolerating the volley of softball questions lobbed at him by host Ashley Graham. “What’s your favourite thing about coming to the Oscars?” she asks. Seven full seconds pass, full of silences and ums and wells, before Grant finally settles on a noncommittal “It’s fascinating”. But worse is to come.
Eventually Grant fumbles the description “It’s Vanity Fair,” meaning Vanity Fair in the sense of an event characterised by ostentatious frivolity. But Graham gets the wrong end of the stick, and starts talking about Vanity Fair (the magazine) and its post-show party. An easy mistake to make, given the context, but it didn’t stop Hugh Grant from staring daggers at her. The interview continues haltingly. Are you excited to see any winners? “No one in particular.” What are you wearing? “Just my suit.” Was it fun being in Glass Onion? “I was barely in it.” Yes, but did you have fun? “Almost.” And then finally, mercifully, the two part company.
Reaction to the clip seems to have split people right down the middle. There are those who have called Hugh Grant grumpy and rude, and have taken him to task for not entering into the spirit of proceedings. And then – and I’m aware that this might be an overgeneralisation – there are British people.
The Grant apologists, of which I am one, didn’t see rudeness in the encounter. They saw awkwardness, self-consciousness at all the artifice of the night, and perhaps a dollop of mild self-loathing for even being part of such a silly parade in the first place. They saw Robert Smith from The Cure at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, being greeted on the red carpet by a full-volume megawatt presenter yelling: “Are you as excited as I am?” and sniffing: “By the sounds of it, no,” in response.
Smith got a pass for this, of course, because of who he is. He is a dark and mysterious figure who once wrote a song called The Drowning Man, so it would have been weird for him to start hopping around and shrieking with excitement. Meanwhile, Hugh Grant played Mickey Blue Eyes, so he has to work harder to earn the role of curmudgeon.
Still, at least Ashley Graham was just doing her job. Other red carpet interviewers have been guilty of wildly overstepping the mark when faced with celebrities. Like Nancy O’Dell, for example, who for some reason decided to approach Taylor Swift on the 2015 Grammys red carpet and basically asked if she was looking forward to having sex with multiple men after the ceremony. “You’re gonna walk home with more than maybe just a trophy tonight,” O’Dell says, looking Swift up and down. “I think lots of men.” To Swift’s credit, she managed to shoot back with an icy: “I’m not gonna walk home with any men tonight.”
Similarly, when faced with mother and daughter duo Melanie Griffith and Dakota Johnson on the Oscars red carpet, ABC host Lara Spencer took it upon herself to press Griffith on why she has never watched any of Johnson’s sexually explicit BDSM 50 Shades movies. “I don’t think I can. I think it would be strange,” replies Griffiths, visibly clenching, as Spencer tries to explain how hot some of the scenes are.
A lot of red carpet weirdness can just be put down to simple overwhelm. When Mia Goth walked a red carpet at last year’s Toronto film festival, she found herself being tugged between two opposing forces – an interviewer who wanted more time than she was able to give, and a publicist eager to shove her down the carpet as quickly as possible. The result, in which Goth is asked to “talk to us about the film”, by a reporter, before quickly walking away, waving and apologising, is probably indicative of a lot of red carpet experiences for actors. Not that it stopped the reporter from huffing: “That was weird as hell,” once she’d gone, though.
But these examples no longer count, because none of them were pulled off with even a fraction of Hugh Grant’s grumpy flair. From this day onwards, Hugh Grant’s red-carpet reputation will precede him. Abandon hope all reporters who encounter him.
