John Mulaney is opening up about turning down the hosting gig for the 2024 Oscars.
While appearing on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast on Monday — the same episode in which Maron announced his podcast would be ending after 16 years — the comedian explained why he decided not to emcee the awards show.
“Well, I was very flattered. They came to me, must have been last summer. And I knew Jimmy Kimmel wasn’t gonna do it. And they offered it,” he began. “And it was honestly that I had a lot going on. And it’s months and months of work.”
The Hollywood Reporter had reported that the first outreach had gone to Kimmel, who’s already emceed the Academy Awards four times. But Kimmel ultimately said no, as he reportedly did hosting this year’s Emmy awards, which also aired on ABC.
Conan O’Brien went on to to host the 97th Academy Awards. Mulaney sang O’Brien’s praises for his hosting tenure. “He came out and he not only was so funny, but he elevated the show to the point that I almost convinced myself I had seen these movies and I’d seen not a one of them,” he quipped.
Maron added he was also proud O’Brien “just locked in and owned the fucking thing” when hosting rather than resort to “self-erasing,” which Maron says he has noticed with O’Brien because he’s known him for so long and has watched him “do a joke” then “kind of take it apart.”
Mulaney recently launched the Netflix talk show Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney.
Mulaney said “there was a plan to do more” and that they were “figuring it out.” And though “it’s been very enjoyable,” he also noted that he has “really felt the 12 weeks in a row” of doing the show.
“We would scale back what we were doing if we were doing it everyday,” Mulaney explained.
When describing the talk show, Mulaney said it was an “evergreen, weird, not quite any era talk show that also is trying to be a variety show in some ways.
“It was more than just that we got to try a lot of bits and jokes and have guests on,” he said. “We just got to try whole episodes where it felt very shoestring and episodes where we were blowing it out production-wise.”
When attending the Next on Netflix event in January, Mulaney had first teased the talk show as a “really fun experiment.” Guests have included Pete Davidson, Henry Winkler, Bill Hader, David Letterman and Natasha Lyonne.
“It’s one of those shows that neither Netflix nor I really needed to do,” Mulaney said at the time. “I never wanted to host a talk show and they were getting out of the talk show game. It was the perfect moment to do this.”
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