The best, worst, and most surprising moments from the 2023 Oscars

After a few unconventional events since the pandemic, this year’s Oscars felt like a return to the iconic Hollywood ceremonies of old. The traditional was champagne-colored to evoke a sandy beach at sunset, and to avoid clashing with the orange tent above it. The gowns were bright, colorful, and very sparkly. Even the men put in the effort to look fabulous (well, ). We’ve been dealing with the effects of the pandemic for years now, and it’s still not really over, but but it sure was nice to see everyone step out into the sunshine looking their absolute best for Hollywood’s biggest party. [Cindy White]

Someone somewhere got an earful tonight after a clearly unwilling on the champagne carpet with host Ashley Graham. It started simply enough, with her asking him about his favorite thing about coming to the Oscars. Seemingly unprepared for the question, he stammered through his answer and mentioned Vanity Fair. Graham assumed he meant the magazine, or perhaps the Oscar party it throws every year, but it wasn’t clear whether Grant meant it in either way. It was all downhill from there. After a few more stumbles Graham pivoted to a relatively safe topic for an awards show: “What are you wearing?” To which he responded, rather unhelpfully, “Just my suit.” Her final attempt to engage the actor was to ask him about a movie he was recently in, Glass Onion. Maybe Graham wasn’t aware that Grant’s role was just a quick cameo, or maybe she was, but he didn’t hesitate to point it out. A cringey interaction for all involved. [Cindy White]

The cast and crew from have become fixtures on the awards circuit this year, and the many honors could not have gone to a more grateful bunch. Still, all those experiences can’t adequately prepare you for the moment when you’re standing on the stage with an Oscar in your hand. After winning the award for directing, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert took the podium and gave that were both personal and universal. Scheinert dedicated his award to “the mommies” of the world and thanked his parents for not squashing his creativity when he was a kid making weird little films and dressing in drag, “which is a threat to nobody” (that line got lots of cheers). Kwan acknowledged the cast and his immigrant family, emphasizing that genius does not come from any one person, but there is greatness in everyone. You can’t help but root for these guys, and their win was one of the highlights of the night. [Cindy White]

In his opening monologue, Jimmy Kimmel noted the absence of two invited guests: Tom Cruise and James Cameron. Normally this wouldn’t be especially notable; celebrities skip awards shows all the time for all sorts of reasons (Glenn Close, for instance, canceled at the last minute due to a positive Covid test). In this case, though, they would have been there to represent the two biggest box-office hits of the year. As Kimmel put it, Cruise and Cameron were the two guys who insisted we go to the theater last year, but they couldn’t come to the theater. Although their films were in contention in several categories, neither of them were individually nominated. Could the reason for their absences be bruised egos? In the absence of any other official explanation, we are left to wonder. And no, we don’t accept the excuse that they were in production on their next projects. Is there anyone in Hollywood who could have stopped either of them from going to the Oscars if they really wanted to be there? [Cindy White]

Jimmy Kimmel and his writers had the unenviable task of figuring out how to talk about last year’s Will Smith-Chris Rock debacle without setting off a whole new round of discourse. He slipped the first mention into a joke about the five Irish actors nominated for awards, saying that “the odds of another fight on stage just went way up.” It was breezy and quick, but that wasn’t the only mention in the monologue. Kimmel took on the subject more directly later on. “If anyone in this theater commits an act of violence during this show, you will be awarded the Oscar for best actor and be permitted to give a 19-minute-long speech,” he said. Kimmel also cautioned that the Academy had a crisis team in place, including Adonis Creed (Michael B. Jordan), Michelle Yeoh, The Mandalorian (Pedro Pascal), Spider-Man (Andrew Garfield, who hilariously grimaced to the camera), and “The Fableman” (a glowering Steven Spielberg). Perhaps the most clever bit of slap-related humor came in the introduction for the best documentary award, the point in last year’s ceremony when Smith lost his temper and accosted Rock on stage. “Hopefully this time it goes off without a hitch, or without Hitch,” he said in reference to the Will Smith film of the same name from 2005. [Cindy White]

On the other hand, many of . And it wasn’t just limited to the disappointing end of his monologue, either: he made a few gaffes throughout the show, too, especially with a bit that involved cutting off the acceptance speech from the visual effects team for . Producers cut the mic onstage just as the team was thanking all their families, just so Kimmel could make a joke from the audience about an afterparty at “CGI Friday’s,” then harangue Malala Yousafzai about the Harry Styles/Chris Pine Spitgate incident. Overall, it just came off as mean and pointless, as did many of the more personal jokes in the opening monologue. [Jen Lennon]

, , and were , which is less an indictment of Academy voters and more a statement about how stiff the competition was this year. Elvis was up for eight awards, including Austin Butler for Best Actor, which everyone thought was a lock, though he ended up losing to Brendan Fraser for The Whale. Banshees was also up for eight awards, and probably had the best shot in the Original Screenplay category, where it lost to Everything Everywhere All At Once. Tár was up for six awards and, though it appeared at the top of many critics’ year-end best-of lists, it didn’t have much of a chance in any of the categories, although there was plenty of momentum at one point in awards season for star Cate Blanchett. [Jen Lennon]

For all the glitz and glamor of the Academy Awards, at its core it’s always been a Hollywood marketing event. This year’s underlying message was an appeal to audiences to go back to theaters, to see movies “as they were meant to be seen.” That’s the kind of generic “hooray for the movies” sentiment the show usually preaches. What was new this year was the promotion of a specific film and a specific studio integrated into the show itself. In the tradition of past years, ABC might have had Melissa McCarthy and Halle Bailey present an award together, followed by a commercial break that would feature a trailer for their upcoming project, . Instead, they appeared on stage and set up the trailer within the broadcast. Later on, Margot Robbie and Morgan Freeman came on to introduce a similar segment dedicated to the 100th anniversary of Warner Bros. That felt a little more in line with what we’ve come to expect from the Oscars, but put together they suggest a troubling and tacky trend we hope doesn’t catch on in future broadcasts. [Cindy White]

Scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis took home the Best Supporting Actress trophy for Everything Everywhere All At Once with the first award of the night in a bit of an upset; many were expecting Angela Bassett to win, as she did at the Golden Globes. Still, we’re not about to complain. Curtis is a legend, she was amazing in Everything Everywhere, and it was nice to see her show her genre fans some love in a rousing acceptance speech. [Jen Lennon]

We’ll never get tired of seeing Ke Huy Quan give acceptance speeches. trophy for his performance in Everything Everywhere All At Once, and he brought the same overwhelming joy and enthusiasm to the Oscars stage that he did to the Golden Globes and the Screen Actors’ Guild awards earlier this year. In his nearly three-minute-long speech, Quan traced his journey from a refugee camp to the Oscars stage, tearfully telling the audience that “this is the American dream.” It was a beautiful, heartfelt moment early in the ceremony that set a nice tone for the rest of the show. [Jen Lennon]

This year’s best actor race was one of the most difficult categories to predict. For most of the awards season, it was a three-man race between Austin Butler for Elvis, Colin Farrell for The Banshees Of Inisherin, and Brendan Fraser for The Whale. Fraser won best actor at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, which is usually a good predictor of who will take home the prize on Oscar night. Still, the odds seemed to favor Butler as the Academy Awards drew near. Elvis received eight Oscar nominations, compared to three for The Whale, and the biopic was generally more well-received by both critics and audiences. None of that mattered in the end. Butler’s musical impersonation was no match for Fraser’s compelling comeback story. [Cindy White]

One of the things that makes the Oscars special is the musical performances, and this year we got some great ones. Lady Gaga ditched her glamorous red-carpet gown and makeup in favor of a T-shirt and ripped jeans for her raw and intimate performance of “Hold My Hand” from . Rihanna lit up the stage with her stunning anthem “Lift Me Up” from . And the energetic live performance of “Naatu Naatu,” complete with a full dance routine inspired by the scene in RRR, brought the house down. If there were doubters in the room who didn’t think “Naatu Naatu” deserved to be nominated alongside the others, that performance surely won them over. [Cindy White]Editor’s note: An earlier version listed RRR stars Ram Charan and Jr NTR as the singers of “Naatu Naatu” on the broadcast, but it was Rahul Sipligunj and Kaala Bhairava who sang the number. We apologize for the error.

We want to emphasize that we don’t blame David Byrne and Stephanie Hsu for the weird, off-key performance of “This Is A Life,” the nominated song from Everything Everywhere All At Once. Both are consummate performers and did the best they could with what seemed like technical issues. It didn’t help that the song features deliberately dissonant harmonies (which fits well with the film) that aren’t easy to pull off live. It was the least successful performance of the night, but at least they looked great doing it. [Cindy White]

Composer M.M. Keeravaani wasn’t given much time to make his acceptance speech for writing the Oscar-winning song “Naatu Naatu” but he made the most of the time he had. He started by saying that he grew up listening to The Carpenters and went on to sing the rest of the speech to the tune of “Top Of The World.” “There was only one thing on my mind,” he sang. “So was Rajamouli’s and my family. RRR has to win, pride of every Indian. And must put me on the top of the world.” Someone must have told him to spice it up after he gave a rather subdued speech following his win at this year’s Golden Globes. We were as thrilled for him as the audience, who gave him a much-deserved standing ovation. [Cindy White]

When we heard that the Cocaine Bear would make an appearance at this year’s Oscars we had reservations. There were so many ways a bit like that could go very wrong. But thanks to director Elizabeth Banks’ comedic timing and delivery (even with a hoarse voice) it worked. The best bit came later, though, when the bear returned during Jimmy Kimmel’s question and answer segment, crawling up the aisle toward human rights activist Malala Yousafzai (who was there as an executive producer of the nominated short documentary Stranger At The Gate) and prompting one of the funniest out-of-context lines of the night from Kimmel: “Cocaine Bear, leave Malala alone!” [Cindy White]

As expected, took home the award for Best Documentary Feature. The film focuses on Alexei Navalny, a Russian opposition leader currently imprisoned for his criticism of the Russian government and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It’s a powerful and vital piece of work, and in his acceptance speech, director Daniel Roher read a message from Navalny. He also gave Navalny’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya. She did so with grace, offering a few brief but affecting words. “My husband is in prison just for telling the truth. My husband is in prison for defending democracy,” she said. Even if you haven’t seen the film, from the speeches alone, it’s hard to deny that it was deserving of recognition. [Jen Lennon]

Between The Banshees Of Inisherin, , and , 2022 wasn’t a great year to be a donkey in the movies, so it was really nice to see Colin Farrell’s furry co-star Jenny alive and well on the Oscars stage (or ). In order to fly her here on a plane from Ireland, Kimmel said, they had to classify her as an “emotional support donkey.” He then offered hugs to anyone in the audience who needed one. The moment was somewhat undercut when we found out later that it wasn’t actually the same donkey who appeared in the movie. We’d still take a hug, though. [Cindy White]