Jimmy Kimmel’s opening monologue at the 96th Academy Awards took its usual digs at many of Hollywood’s most famous faces, looked back at the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike, and even celebrated the most famous dog in the US right now.
For Kimmel’s fourth time at the Oscars’ helm, having run the show in 2017, 2018 and last year, he kicked off his 12-minute-plus speech by paying homage to Greta Gerwig and Barbie – lambasting the clapping audience for not nominating Gerwig in the best director category in the process.
“Don’t act like you had nothing to do with this,” he quipped.
After giving his verbal flowers to Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan and stars Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr, Kimmel took aim at Downey. Kimmel said Downey, who is nominated for best supporting actor, is currently at his “highest point”, or “one of his highest points” – in an obvious reference to Downey Jr’s past history of drug use.
As the camera panned to Downey Jr, he gestured to Kimmel to move along.
Perhaps the star of Kimmel’s monologue was Messi, who iconically played Snoop in this year’s quintuple-nominee Anatomy of a Fall. After showing the canine happily seated in the audience, Kimmel said of Messi’s performance: “I haven’t seen a French actor eat vomit like that since Gerard Depardieu.”
Among other remarks about Robert de Niro, Jodie Foster, Bradley Cooper and Steven Spielberg, Kimmel also squeezed in a politically prescient remark about Katie Britt, the 42-year-old senator from Alabama who gave the Republican response to president Joe Biden’s State of the Union address last week.
On addressing Emma Stone’s role in best picture nominee Poor Things, Kimmel joked: “Emma Stone played an adult lady with the brain of a child, kinda like the lady that gave the State of the Union rebuttal.”
The culmination of Kimmel’s speech was a several minute ode to the 148-day writers’ strike that took place over five months in 2023.
“We learned a lot while out on the picket lines,” Kimmel said, noting the historic agreement that the Writers Guild of America (WGA) came to.
He continued: “This long and difficult work stoppage taught us that this very strange town of ours – as pretentious and superficial as it can be at its heart is a union town. It’s not just a bunch of heavily Botoxed, Hailey Bieber-smoothie drinking, diabetes prescription abusing, gluten-sensitive nepo babies with perpetually shivering chihuahuas. This is a coalition of strong, hardworking mentally tough American labourers; women and men who would 100% for sure die if we even had to touch the handle of a shovel. But the reason we were able to make a deal is because of the people who rallied besides us. So, before we celebrate ourselves let’s have a very well deserved round of applause for the people who work behind the scenes.”
Kimmel then brought out those who are working behind the scenes of the 2024 Oscars as the audience applauded and gave a standing ovation.
Sunday evening’s broadcast is slated to see a panoply of big-name celebrity presenters outside of Kimmel, including Dwayne Johnson, Jennifer Lawrence and Zendaya as the Academy attempts to boost audience numbers for the Oscars telecast.
Read more about the 2024 Oscars:
• Here’s our news wrap and full list of winners – now read Peter Bradshaw’s verdict
• Al Pacino, British mothers and a codpiece envelope: the real winners and losers of the night
• Relive how the ceremony unfolded with our liveblog and get up to speed with the top viral moments and the best quotes of the night
• Have a gander at how the stars looked on the red carpet and at the show
