Host Conan O’Brien seems throughout the Oscars on Sunday, March 15, 2026, on the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles
| Photo Credit: AP
Conan O’Brien opened his second Oscars with jokes about synthetic intelligence and Timothée Chalamet’s takes on the tremendous arts.
“I am Conan O’Brien and I am honored to be the last human host of the Academy Awards,” O’Brien mentioned after taking the stage for the ABC telecast on the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood on Sunday evening for the 98th version of the ceremony. “Next year it’s going to be a Waymo in a tux.”
O’Brien then informed the viewers that safety was excessive at this 12 months’s Oscars.
“I hear there are concerns about attacks form both the opera and ballet communities,” the host mentioned, getting a giant snicker because the digicam reduce to a laughing Chalamet, one of the best actor nominee whose feedback on the artwork kinds throughout the run-up to the present grew to become fodder for the cultural discourse.
Visual Story: The 98th Academy Awards
“It’s his first time in a theater!” O’Brien mentioned.
A pre-recorded opening bit had O’Brien carrying Amy Madigan’s caked-on Aunt Gladys make-up fromWeapons, and confirmed him being chased by offended children as she was within the movie within the function that received her finest supporting actress only a few minutes later.
Also Read: Oscars 2026 LIVE: Winners, updates and full results from the 98th Academy Awards
Gladys-Conan was then folded into clips from different main nominees. He was animated into KPop Demon Hunters, performed desk tennis in opposition to Timothée Chalamet in Marty Supreme and ran throughout the Shakesperean stage in Hamnet.
After successful critiques in his internet hosting debut final 12 months, O’Brien, the 62-year-old onetime author for Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons, former longtime discuss present host, {and professional} podcaster, was rehired nearly instantly.
He had almost a 12 months to arrange this time, and received to do it in significantly extra consolation. Last 12 months, O’Brien was among the many individuals displaced by the Los Angeles-area wildfires.
“This 12 months I received to get up in my room,” he said earlier in the week.
O’Brien may have given the Academy Awards telecast some stability in the hosting spot after much uncertainty about the role that can often be thankless, including a three-year stretch from 2019-2021 with no host at all. ABC convinced Jimmy Kimmel, the face of the entertainment side of the network, to host four times, something that’s unlikely to happen again with the Oscars moving to YouTube.
Published – March 16, 2026 07:05 am IST
