Academy Awards (Oscars)

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      Paul Tazewell Is First Black Man to Win Oscar for Best Costume Design for ‘Wicked’

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      Paul Tazewell became the first Black man to win the Oscar for best costume design Sunday. Honored for his work on the Broadway musical adaptation “Wicked,” Tazewell stepped to the dais and said, “I am the first Black man to receive the costume design award.” The remark prompted a standing ovation as Tazewell continued with his brief acceptance speech, in which he thanked “my Oz-ian muses, Cynthia and Ariana,” referring to the actresses Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande.In 2019, Ruth E. Carter became the first Black designer to win the Oscar for costume design, for her work on “Black Panther.” More

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      Halle Berry and Adrien Brody Recreate Famous Oscars Kiss on Red Carpet

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      Plenty of kisses were shared on the Oscars red carpet on Sunday night — but none could have been as nostalgic as the moment Adrien Brody and Halle Berry locked lips.More than two decades after Brody planted a shocking kiss on Berry at the 2003 Oscars after winning the best actor statuette for his role in “The Pianist,” she returned the favor in grand fashion as onlookers cheered. The moment, captured by Access Hollywood, quickly spread across social media.“That was one hell of a night for him, and for me as well,” Berry told Variety after smooching Brody, who is nominated for best actor for his role in “The Brutalist.” “Tonight I had to pay him back.”A reunion 22 years in the making. #Oscars pic.twitter.com/MkaF2xb6SE— The Academy (@TheAcademy) March 2, 2025

      Berry told the outlet that she had seen Brody around Hollywood at various parties, but Sunday night was the first time in decades that they had seen each other on a red carpet.“He’s nominated this year,” she said. “He deserved that.”Their kiss onstage in 2003 made headlines and has become one of the most talked about Oscar moments in history.After kissing Berry that night, Brody quipped, “I bet they didn’t tell you that was in the gift bag.”Over the years, both actors have discussed the moment at length. On “Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen” in 2017, Berry said that the kiss was not planned and that she was as shocked as everyone else.Berry said that she went along with it “because I was there the year before, and I know the feeling of being out of your body.” Berry made history in 2002 for her role in “Monster’s Ball,” becoming the first Black woman to win an Oscar for best actress.Brody also revisited the kiss in a profile with Variety last month. “We live in a very conscious time, which is a wonderful thing,” he said. “And nothing that I ever do or have done or would’ve done is ever done with the intention of making anyone feel bad.” More

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      Conan O’Brien’s Oscars Monologue: Little Roasting, No Politics, Very Silly

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      Conan O’Brien brought the bizarre back to Oscar hosting.In a studiously silly (and sniffily) performance that began with the gross-out humor of his emerging out of the body of Demi Moore from “The Substance,” O’Brien evoked some of his delightfully experimental bits from his old late-night show.For winners whose speeches go on too long, he promised to cut to a shot of a game John Lithgow “looking slightly disappointed.” He continued a fun Adam Sandler bit from the Golden Globe Awards. And in a concise joke delivered deftly, he said: “Bob Dylan wanted to be here, but not that badly.”The whole thing had a light touch: little roasting and no politics. The edgiest joke might have been when he promised that no A.I. was used in making the Oscars, before fessing up: “We used child labor.” But you got the sense this punchline mattered less than his follow-up, when Conan added out of nowhere: “We lost little Billy.” Not since David Letterman, the most underrated Oscar host of the modern era, has a monologue been this loopy. More

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      Kieran Culkin Wins Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for ‘A Real Pain’

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      Kieran Culkin won the Academy Award for best supporting actor for his role as the descendant of a Holocaust survivor who makes a family pilgrimage to Poland in the dramatic comedy of manners “A Real Pain.”This was the first Oscar nomination for Culkin, 42, who was a favorite to take home the honor. His performance as Benji Kaplan, a disinhibited and emotionally unstable charmer who embarks on the trip with his anxious cousin (Jesse Eisenberg), earned Culkin a shelf’s worth of statues this awards season, including from the Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.Culkin’s nomination is one of two for “A Real Pain,” which is also competing for best original screenplay. Eisenberg wrote the script and directed the film.The other candidates in the best supporting actor category were Yura Borisov, for the modern rags-to-riches fable “Anora”; Edward Norton, who plays Pete Seeger in the Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown”; Guy Pearce, for his role as an architect’s predatory patron in “The Brutalist”; and Culkin’s “Succession” co-star Jeremy Strong, who portrayed Donald J. Trump’s mentor Roy Cohn in “The Apprentice.”In a charming, casual speech that was largely pointed toward his wife, Jazz Charton, Culkin told a short story about asking her for a fourth child if he won an Oscar. It was a memory they had not discussed in years, and he chose this moment to remind her. “Let’s get cracking on those kids,” he quipped.Culkin also thanked his manager, his team and his co-star Eisenberg.“Thank you for this, baby,” he said. “You’re a genius. I’d never say that to your face. Thank you for this movie.” More

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      Conan O’Brien Pokes Fun at Top Movies and Stars in Oscars Monologue

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      Conan O’Brien was literally born to host the Oscars.After a pretaped sketch on Sunday in which O’Brien emerged out of the back of Demi Moore, the star of “The Substance,” before turning around to dig into her spine cavern for a lost shoe, the comedian broke into his monologue.He poked fun at many of the show’s nominees, and himself, starting with a list of recent films — “A Complete Unknown,” “A Real Pain,” “Nosferatu” — that he joked he was called on the red carpet. “I think two were fair,” he said.The monologue also razzed Netflix’s 18 nominations (and price increases), the length of “The Brutalist” and the recent controversy about “Emilia Pérez” actress Karla Sofia Gascón’s offensive social media posts.“Little fact for you: ‘Anora’ uses the F-word 479 times,” he said. “That’s three more than the record set by Karla Sofia Gascón’s publicist.”O’Brien also called out best actor nominee Timothée Chalamet’s portrayal of the musician Bob Dylan from the stage, and the absence of Dylan himself: “Bob Dylan wanted to be here tonight, but not that badly.”He also riffed on the recent news that Amazon has taken control of the James Bond franchise, joking that it had found its next 007: Amazon’s senior vice president of global affairs, Steve Belsky. “Ladies love him,” O’Brien said. (According to an Amazon corporate website, the real senior vice president and chief of global affairs is David A. Zapolsky.)After a joke about Adam Sandler’s fashion sense, O’Brien suddenly changed tone to address the devastation of the wildfires in Los Angeles, and how an awards show can seem self-indulgent if that context was not addressed. He praised the craftspeople and others behind the camera who devoted their life to film, and how the ceremony was to celebrate their work too.“Even in the face of terrible wildfires and divisive politics, the work, which is what this is about, the work continues,” he said. “For years to come through trauma, and joy, this seemingly absurd ritual is going to be here.”“I will not,” he continued. “I’m leaving Hollywood to run a bed-and-breakfast in Orlando. And I’d like to see you there.”O’Brien closed his monologue by promising not to waste time, before breaking into a musical number about how he would not waste time, complete with a dancing Deadpool and the sandworm from “Dune: Part Two” playing “Chopsticks” on a piano.“Well, we’re 40 minutes over,” O’Brien joked. More

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      Is the Movie ‘Wicked Really an Anti-Authoritarian Musical?

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      I first saw “Wicked” in 2003, when I was 22 and studying musical theater writing at N.Y.U. As a nascent musical theater writer, I was impressed by its craftsmanship and unusual premise: that the cackling, green-faced Wicked Witch of the West most of us know from the 1939 film has a name: Elphaba Thropp.We also learn that she is not wicked at all. That’s just propaganda spread by Elphaba’s enemies because she stood up for the rights of the enchanted land’s talking animals, whom the not-so-wonderful Wizard of Oz had oppressed. At the time, the plot and its modern sensibility read very simply to me as a quirky, catchy musical fairy-tale soap opera subversion of a beloved classic.It was only in the intervening years that I learned that “Wicked” was intended to have real world political resonance. With the election of President Trump to a second term, and the release of the first of its two parts as a film, “Wicked” has blossomed into what the director and producer Adam McKay recently described online as “one of the most radical big studio Hollywood movies ever made.” It is now feminist, queer and antifascist. I’ve even seen it suggested, however unseriously, that releasing the film before the 2024 election might have helped Kamala Harris win the presidency. “Wicked: Part One” is up for 10 Academy Awards on Sunday. If it wins Best Picture, I can only imagine that will be a signal to some on the liberal left that the roundly defeated Trump “resistance” is not so dead after all, and that the time has come to levitate on their brooms and take to the Western skies for battle in the 2026 midterms and beyond.But are assertions like this reading too much into this film? Does Elphaba have anything at all to do with this or any political moment in America? Or are we engaging in what I call progressive magical thinking — a mode of reasoning that takes existing texts and then tries to reclaim or reimagine them for the purpose of imbuing them with socially correct attitudes or critiques? As a musical and a film, “Wicked” falls squarely in the middle of this trend that has been exacerbated over time and by the internet’s obsession with current events and “timeliness.”But the inclusion of these references and themes does not paint a convincing portrait of any real-world political parallels in either 2003 (when “Wicked” opened on Broadway) or today.As one example, progressive magical thinking makes it reasonable to suggest that because of the fact that L. Frank Baum, the writer of the 1900 novel “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,” upon which all of this is loosely based, had undeniably racist attitudes toward Native Americans, his judgment might have been too compromised to compassionately portray the true character of the Wicked Witch (a character he created), and thus, like child protective services, Gregory Maguire, who wrote the novel that the musical is based on, and later Stephen Schwartz, its composer, and Winnie Holzman, who wrote the musical’s book, rightly took custody of Mr. Baum’s abused child with their revisions. But if Mr. Baum’s racism is so objectionable, isn’t any attempt to reimagine his work just striking a complicit and corrupt bargain with a bigot?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      An Underrated Nominee

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      Plus, news about David Leonhardt and the Morning. My colleagues and I started this newsletter almost five years ago, in the early weeks of the Covid lockdowns. And running it has been one of the best jobs I’ve had. I’m grateful to all of you who make time in your day for The Morning.But I’ve learned during my 25 years at The Times that change is healthy, and I will be switching to a new job this week on the Opinion side, overseeing the writing and editing of Times editorials.You will be in great hands here at The Morning. This newsletter has always been a group project, produced by a spirited team of journalists in New York, Washington, London and elsewhere, and The Times will name a new lead writer soon. Starting tomorrow, I will join you as one of The Morning’s many readers.Now onto the rest of today’s newsletter.María Jesús ContrerasClose encountersThe Brazilian film “I’m Still Here” is up for three trophies at tonight’s 97th Academy Awards. If I had my way, which the academy year after year for some reason sees fit to deny me, “I’m Still Here” would win best picture. It’s the movie that thrilled me the most, the movie I can’t stop thinking about and recommending and wanting to watch again. Our all-seeing awards season columnist Kyle Buchanan tells me best picture is probably going to “Anora,” but he thinks the star of “I’m Still Here,” Fernanda Torres, will win for best actress.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Yura Borisov Was a Star for the Kremlin. Now He Could Be One at the Oscars.

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      Yura Borisov, who is nominated for an Academy Award on Sunday, is pulling off a rare feat: pleasing audiences at home in Russia as well as in the West.On the face of it, the Russian actor Yura Borisov was an unlikely actor to land an Oscar nomination in 2025.Just a few years ago he played a guileless soldier in a Kremlin-sponsored movie that celebrated a Soviet tank model. Later, he starred in a biopic of Mikhail Kalashnikov, the man who invented the Russian automatic rifle.But after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, he stopped playing in militaristic movies. Last year, Western audiences fell in love with him as a tight-lipped but sentimental mafia errand boy in “Anora,” a Brooklyn-based indie dramedy about a stripper who impulsively marries the son of a Russian oligarch.At the Academy Awards on Sunday, Borisov is up for best supporting actor for the role.The war in Ukraine cut many Russian artists off from the West, but Borisov has been among the few who managed to transcend the dividing lines. He has continued a career in Russia, without endorsing or condemning the war, while in the West, he has evaded being seen as a representative of state-sponsored Russian culture.“Borisov hasn’t picked a side,” said Anton Dolin, a leading Russian film critic. “Maybe he is just very smart, or maybe he thinks he is not smart enough,” Dolin said by phone from Riga, Latvia, where he now lives in exile.“It doesn’t matter,” Dolin added. “His behavior and strategy have been impeccable.”Borisov at the BAFTA Film Awards in London this month. Over the past weeks, he has been on the road campaigning for awards for “Anora” and attending ceremonies. Andy Rain/EPA, via ShutterstockWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More