This year’s Oscars host Conan O’Brien has opened up about some of the very strict guidelines regarding how the iconic awards statue can and can’t be portrayed on screen.
Speaking on the latest edition of his podcast Conan Needs A Friend, the US comic revealed that he had several ideas for promo videos for the Oscars that the Academy ultimately nixed.
In one, Conan suggested portraying himself and a human-sized rendering of the Oscar as a domestic couple.
“At one point, I thought, ‘wouldn’t it be great if it’s just on the couch?’,” he recalled, pitching the idea to “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’,” Conan explained, noting that he was told “Oscar can never be horizontal”.
Andrew Eccles via Disney via Getty Images
He admitted: “That blew my mind. Like, wow, this is like the thigh bone of St. Peter. This is a religious icon.”
In another of his pitches, Conan said he wanted to portray the Oscar a traditional 1950s apron, only to be told: “No clothing on Oscar. Oscar is always naked.”
Watch the promo that Conan was allowed to make below:
Meanwhile, one Oscars guest recently shared that each attendee was given a snack box that included a touching note from Conan himself.
However, it seems that the US talk show host also encountered some very different red tape when putting this together.
“I tried my best to include a gummy but Disney said that was a ‘hard pass’,” a note from Conan contained within the box also claimed.
