Oscars' Long-Standing Hosting Tradition Is Dead, Kevin Hart Says

Summary

• Viewers are looking forward to the upcoming Academy Awards.
• Such ceremonies are on the cusp of losing their entertainment component.
• Kevin Hart believes that these events are no longer suitable for comedians.

With 2024 already upon us and March fast approaching, the upcoming 96th Academy Awards is the talk of the town. First and foremost, movie lovers are excited, as 2023 saw a plethora of remarkable films – from fan favorites Barbie and Oppenheimer to the more niche Poor Things and Maestro. And while predicting the winner is the main reason viewers are anticipating the event, it's not the only one.

As much as people are eager to find out who the ultimate victor of the 96th Academy Awards will be, they're also looking forward to the event, which will be hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, because it's usually the host and their jokes that make the Oscars memorable. However, it seems that the Oscars may be less entertaining in the near future.

Kevin Hart's Prediction

Kevin Hart, who was set to host the 2019 Oscars, stepped down from the role after a scandal broke over his decades-old tweets. Accused of homophobia, the comedian was made to feel unwelcome as an Oscars host despite his apologies. And even though he seems to have redeemed himself since then, Hart is absolutely unwilling to host an awards show. His reasoning is simple – the Oscars and events like them aren't funny anymore.

'Those gigs aren't good gigs for comics. It's no shot to the Oscars, no shot to the Globes or anything else. Those just aren't, you know, comedy-friendly environments anymore. So, I think they got it right one year where it was like just a bunch of personalities acting as the hosts and that's a nice thing. It's a collaborative thing, different people get to be responsible for act one, act two, act three, but you know, the days of it being a room for a comic, those days are done,' Kevin Hart said in a recent interview.

The Problem with the Ceremonies

According to the fan-favorite comedian, entertaining a room full of Hollywood heavyweights is a tall order, and modern comics who haven't been in the industry for a long time can't handle it.

'There's a lot of people that understand that if you're not an industry comic, meaning a comic that has the relationships of all [the guests], then those rooms are very cold. So, me doing it is, of course, at an advantage, because I know the room and for me, and [I am] familiar with so many. But, for others it's not the same,' Kevin Hart explained. 'It's not the gig that it was of old. It's too much pressure on the idea of a comic and what's jokes and not jokes. So, it's tough.'

With that in mind, it will be interesting to see how these events evolve.

Source: Sky News.