In June 2023, John Mulaney made an appearance on The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast, and he was asked whether he would ever consider hosting the Oscars. “Sure, why not?†he replied. “It would be really fun. It’s hosting the Academy Awards. Johnny Carson did that.†Well, on January 9, the comedian got one step closer to living out this hypothetical when he hosted the Governors Awards, an event that presented honorary Oscars to Mel Brooks, Angela Bassett, and film editor Carol Littleton as well as the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award to the Sundance Institute’s Michelle Satter. If, on the off chance, the Academy was treating this as some sort of trial run for the big show itself, it’s safe to say Mulaney’s audition went well. “It is an honor and a favor to be here,†he joked. “This is a strategic obligation.â€
And off Mulaney went in his monologue about the year in film and the night’s honorees, joking about everything from the title of Maestro (“Originally titled Bye, Feliciaâ€) to Brooks’s appearance (“Do you know the guy that did the prosthetic nose for Maestro? He did Mel’s entire face and body and personality for the last 97 yearsâ€) to the improbability of Bassett getting an Oscar nomination for a Marvel movie: “That’s like getting a Pulitzer Prize for a Reddit comment.†(Cut to a shot of Iron Man himself, Robert Downey Jr., laughing in the crowd.) At one point, Mulaney ingratiated himself to the celebrity-filled audience by pointing out that he isn’t just “another goddamned stand-up comedian here to make fun†of their “sacred rituals†but rather an in-demand Hollywood actor. He proved this by reading an email from his agents that asked him to self-tape an audition for a role called Young Cop for an unnamed project without a script that he ultimately did not get.
Then, in a move stolen from his hosting stint at the Film Independent Spirit Awards in 2017 alongside Nick Kroll, Mulaney ended his monologue by reading an oddball quote from a famous actor completely unrelated to the night’s proceedings. In this case, he read from an Al Pacino Playboy interview in which the actor talked about how he had taken so much Valium while attending the Oscars one year that he was thankful he didn’t win because he was doubtful he’d be able to make it to the stage. What better way to kick off an evening honoring celebrated legends and humanitarians?