Conan O’Brien Roasts Karla Sofía Gascón in Oscars Opening: If You ‘Tweet About the Oscars, Remember, My Name Is Jimmy Kimmel’
First-time Oscars host Conan O’Brien roasted nominees and the industry in his 2025 Academy Awards opening monologue on Sunday night. He’s taking over for repeat host Jimmy Kimmel, who sat this year out but came up in O’Brien’s starting set.
Karla Sofía Gascón, the controversy-embroiled, history-making trans Best Actress nominee who leads “Emilia Pérez,” attended the event after all. Otherwise, she’s abstained from attending American awards shows and events since her inflammatory past tweets resurfaced at the end of January. Gascón, a Spanish actress who has spoken in her narrative language throughout the awards season, appeared to be receiving English translations of O’Brien’s remarks from a companion sitting next to her.
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“Little fact for you: ‘Anora’ uses the F word 479 times,” O’Brien said. “That’s three more than the record set by Karla Sofía Gascón’s publicist.” O’Brien then imitated one of Gascón’s reps, in a high-pitched voice: “You tweeted WHAT?”
He then added, “Karla, if you’re going to tweet about the Oscars, remember, my name is Jimmy Kimmel.”
Earlier in the set, he also took aim at streamer Netflix. “Netflix leads all studios with an impressive 18 — count them — 18 price increases. I think they can beat that next year.” (Netflix did earn 18 nominations altogether, including 13 for “Emilia Pérez,” making the Spanish-language musical one of the most nominated films of all time.)
He also joked, honing in on a controversy obsessing Hollywood at the moment, “I want you to know we did not use AI to make this show. We would never do that. We use child labor.”
O’Brien also poked fun at various nominees by showing baby and school pictures (including of an in utero fetus meant to represent Timothée Chalamet), as well as Jeff Bezos and Amazon Studios. He joked about how Amazon MGM has recently taken over control of the James Bond franchise, with Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson signing over the rights.
“Big news recently, Amazon has taken over the 007 franchise, and they just announced the next James Bond. Did you know that? Yeah, it’s Amazon senior vice president of global affairs Steve Goldstein. Ladies love him,” O’Brien said.
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