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It’s safe to say that, all things considered, Conan O’Brien did a really good job hosting the Academy Awards – but apparently the original opening of the show was very different. Also, it featured O’Brien in green makeup (which, considering that the guy is six foot four, would have been an incredible visual gag.)
On his podcast “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” (via a report in Deadline), the former late-night host sat down with his head writer, Mike Sweeney, and said that the opening originally featured O’Brien popping in and out of different movies nominated for Best Picture. Sure, this is a gag that has certainly been done a million times at a million award ceremonies, but frankly, O’Brien’s take sounded really funny.
“It was the idea that, ‘Oh, Conan’s now going to goof on all the movies,'” O’Brien said. “It starts with me and I’m in ‘Wicked’ and I’m all green, finishing ‘Defying Gravity’ or one of those songs. And I finish it and then you cut to the next thing, which is ‘Gladiator II’ and ‘clang, clang, clang’ with swords and you see that I’m a gladiator but then you notice that I’m still green. And then you go on to ‘Conclave and you see people voting with their ballots and one of the hands is still green.” After that, O’Brien said that “Dune: Part Two” star Javier Bardem would have started hassling him over the green makeup: “The whole thing was that the dye wouldn’t come off and we had to shoot it in one day.”
“We loved it,” Sweeney chimed in. “It was hammered out before the fires happened, and even after that we kind of honed it.”
The sandworm was also supposed to have a bigger role
So what happened? Well, all of this was scrapped due to the wildfires that devastated Los Angeles at the beginning of 2025. Instead of Conan O’Brien’s planned opening, “Wicked” stars Ariana Grande-Butera and Cynthia Erivo, both of whom were nominated along with the film, sang “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” “Home” (from “The Wiz”), and then dueted on their showstopping number from the film, “Defying Gravity.” The musical performance was also preceded by a short-pretaped ode to Los Angeles on film.
“One of the things you learn … is don’t fall in love with anything because also the times change,” O’Brien said later in the podcast. “If something is eight weeks out or nine weeks out, what’s funny now isn’t the story four weeks later. So many of the narratives kept changing.”
Also, according to O’Brien, the sandworm from “Dune: Part Two,” who did appear onstage during O’Brien’s cheeky number “I Won’t Waste Time” to play “Chopsticks” on the piano and later in the telecast to play the harp, was originally going to do more and perhaps even present an award (sort of). “There was one idea where the sandworm comes out with an envelope [to present an award] and we were like, ‘No, how are we going to get – he’s not going to move!'” O’Brien said, recalling that they considered lowering the sandworm down from the ceiling. “He was going to have lines,” he continued. “Then, it became clear that sandworm needs to be in the orchestra and needs to have gone to the Berklee School of Music.”
There was one Oscars line Conan O’Brien couldn’t cross
Throughout the podcast discussion, both Conan O’Brien and Mike Sweeney said they had a pretty good time working on the Oscars and didn’t get a whole lot of pushback from the Academy except for one joke that, in the eyes of the institution, apparently came close to defaming the famous statuette. O’Brien said that they had a bit where he and a life-sized Oscar were arguing — not during the ceremony, but in a promo reel for the evening — and the specific position they wanted for the statue presented a problem.
“We’re fighting about things couples fight about,” O’Brien said. “At one point, I thought wouldn’t it be great if it’s just on the couch? Let’s lay it on a really big couch and I’ll be vacuuming and say, ‘Could you at least lift your feet? Or could you at least get up and help? Load the dishwasher?’ We wanted to do it and they just said, ‘No, no, no, that can’t happen.'”
“One of the people from the Academy came forward and said, ‘Oscar can never be horizontal,'” Sweeney said. “And that blew my mind. Like, wow, this is like the thigh bone of St. Peter. This is a religious icon.” (They also wanted to put an apron on the Oscar to make it clear that it was O’Brien’s domestic partner, but Sweeney said that was also a no-go: “They said, ‘No clothing on Oscar.'”)
Luckily, the ceremony was great even without these scrapped jokes, but here’s the conclusion I’ve reached: O’Brien should be allowed to host the Oscars every year for as long as he wants, because even his rejected bits are awesome. You can stream “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” on major podcasting platforms now.
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