In a move that’s not for any particular reason, he’s probably just really busy that night, wait, why are you asking?, Deadline reports that Casey Affleck has withdrawn from participating in this year’s Oscars. Traditionally, the previous year’s winners for Best Actor and Best Actress appear at the ceremony to present the award to their gender-swapped counterpart. But Affleck—who won the 2017 award for Best Actor for Manchester By The Sea—says he won’t be attending this year, as he “did not want to become a distraction from the focus that should be on the performances of the actresses in the category.”
Or—and we’re just spitballing here—maybe it would be extremely awkward or an actor who settled not one, but two sexual-harassment lawsuits brought by his former employees to attend the first Oscars ceremony after the establishment of the celebrity-backed Time’s Up campaign dedicated to fighting sexual harassment in the workplace. (A Change.org petition to disinvite Affleck from the ceremony, for what those are worth, has collected almost 20,000 signatures.) Hell, even last year Brie Larson refused to clap for Affleck after she read his name at the ceremony, a decision about which she said, “I think that whatever it was that I did onstage kind of spoke for itself.” In other words, he knows what he did.