8-Year-Old ‘Lion’ Star Sunny Pawar Had the Most Fun at Last Night’s Oscars

One instantly infamous Best Picture mixup aside, people had a lot of fun at last night’s 2017 Academy Awards. But an adorable, and adorably dapper, bow tie- and sneaker-clad Sunny Pawar from Lion may have had the best time of anyone in attendance.

His night started out strong: First Dev Patel, the costar with whom Pawar charmed a room of Hollywood’s best and brightest at the Golden Globes last month, helped him make some final suit adjustments — and the Internet swooned.

When Pawar stepped out on the carpet, grinning ear to ear, before charmingly adjusting his bow tie and flashing a thumbs up, people lost it.

But for the adorable 8-year-old, the good times were just beginning. Up next: meeting Spider-Man, aka Andrew Garfield, who was nominated for an Academy Award this year for his role in Hacksaw Ridge. Pawar can’t contain his enthusiasm at encountering the actor, and from the looks of these snapshots, the feeling is more than mutual.

Later in the night, the charming boy from Mumbai posed for a selfie with another fan who may look familiar: Samuel L. Jackson couldn’t resist sharing a picture of his meeting with the Lion star. “This is who Should Have Won Best Actor tonight, Sunny Pawar of Lion! Totally Killed It!” he captioned the shot, which, yes, does hilariously include a photobombing Seth Rogen in the background.

And of course, there was the moment during the telecast when the show’s host, Jimmy Kimmel, thrust him front and center for a Lion King bit that some loved and others felt was a wee bit problematic — though Pawar himself seemed to genuinely enjoy it.

But Pawar’s best moment of the night, candy falling from the sky notwithstanding, had to be his insanely sweet encounter with Chrissy Teigen. The model, who was walking the Oscars red carpet in support of husband John Legend’s work on the Best Picture-nominated film La La Land, appeared beyond excited to encounter the award season’s most adorable 8-year-old.

“I’m Chrissy. Hi, you!” she said upon spotting Pawar, before kneeling down to his eye level and eagerly pulling him into a hug. That Teigen will, without hesitation, drop to her knees while wearing a pristine cream-colored gown, fear of rips and stains be damned, in order to better embrace the pint-size star pretty much perfectly explains why we love her so. Legend can be seen in the background happily snapping pictures and doing his part to document the occasion properly, like a good Instagram husband should.

Teigen appears to have been absolutely itching to meet the young actor. When she later shared the video on Twitter, she captioned it with a simple and effusive “finally!!!” And when it comes to the inarguably endearing Pawar, we couldn’t agree more: Finally! His adorable charm is exactly what we need right now.

Related: This Year’s Cutest Oscars Dates, Brought to You by Chris Evans and Ryan Gosling

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