Conan didn’t hold back when talking about the lead of the film with the most nominations
Conan O’Brien left Oscar viewers speechless with a brutal joke at the expense of Emilia Pérez star Karla Sofía Gascón.
The past two ceremonies had been hosted by Conan’s fellow talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel, with the Oscars going without a host from 2019 to 2021.
Beginning his career as a writer on Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons, Conan became a household name when he surprisingly replaced David Letterman on Late Night, a position he held until 2009.
A major turning-point in Conan’s career was when he was picked by NBC to present The Tonight Show in place of Jay Leno in 2009. However, Conan was only the face of America’s biggest talk-show for a year, receiving a $45 million payout when the station decided to bring back Jay.
With fans fearing that they wouldn’t see Conan’s unique sense of humour anymore, TBS announced months after his exit that he would present a new talk-show, simply titled Conan. Joined by his sidekick and best friend Andy Richter, Conan presented his final talk-show until 2021 when he decided to focus on his podcast Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend and his HBO travel series Conan O’Brien Must Go.
Prior to making his opening monalogue, a video played of Conan emerging out of Demi Moore’s character in The Substance, with him losing his shoe in the process.
In a speech which saw Conan make fun of Amazon having creative control of James Bond, AI being used in some of the nominees and showing old photos of the stars in attendance, Conan didn’t hold back when talking about the lead of the film with the most nominations.
“Anora uses the f-word 479 times. That’s more than the record set by Karla Sofía Gascón’s publicist… Karla if you are going to tweet about the #Oscars tonight, my name is Jimmy Kimmel,” he said.
Netflix musical Emilia Pérez led the pack heading into the evening with a staggering 13 nominations, just one behind the record of 14 that is shared by Titanic, All About Eve, and La La Land.
However, the former Best Picture frontrunner was left unlikely to break any records after its Oscar campaign was derailed by a series of offensive tweets resurfacing from Gascón’s X account.
Gascon, who smiled in the audience upon hearing the joke, had skipped some awards ceremonies before the Oscars because of historical tweets she made about Islam and Black Lives Matter protests.
Those watching the ceremony at home took to X, previously known as Twitter, to have their say on the most notable joke from Conan’s monologue.
@debayo_xx said: “Someone check on karla sofia gascon’s publicist.” @szaseiji added: “Conan woke up and chose Twitter beef.”
@VOTU_D stated: “Conan O’Brien’s humor never disappoints! He’s always got a clever way with words.” @NextBestPicture commented: “The Karla Sofia Gascon publicist and Jimmy Kimmel jokes were KILLER!!! Conan is a savage.”
While @NJD316 wrote: “Conan in ten minutes has been better than years of Kimmel. We could’ve had him as our host for years.”