Jimmy Kimmel and Wanda Sykes Revealed How Much Oscars Hosts Get Paid
Ever wonder how much celebs get paid to host the Academy Awards? Cool, because Jimmy Kimmel and Wanda Sykes went into detail about what each of them got paid to host the Oscars (side note: Jimmy hosted in 2017 and 2018, while Wanda is cohosting with Regina Hall and Amy Schumer tonight) and joked that it basically costs them money to take the gig.
“I was really excited about [hosting], but then I realized that out of all the jobs that I have, this one is actually gonna cost me money,” Wanda said, to which Jimmy responded, “It is going to cost you money—will you say how much you get paid for this?”
Wanda then joked, “I don’t even know; it’s, like, scale probably” (side note again: “scale” is the minimum that SAG-AFTRA union members can get paid), while Jimmy added he was paid “less than” scale when he hosted.
“It’s less than that,” he said. “I got paid $15,000 to host the Oscars. And there’s one of me! You guys will probably have to split that.” ($15,000 is obviously a lot of money, but Jimmy and Wanda went on to say that being host actually involves months and months of work ahead of the show.)
Jimmy then encouraged Wanda to renegotiate her deal, saying, “You’re getting robbed, you know what? Hold out right now because they need hosts, you know?” Honestly, yes to this plan…although honestly, also yes to Wanda’s plan, which is to “steal an Oscar.”
In terms of what we can expect from Wanda, Regina, and Amy as they continue to host tonight, Wanda said, “We’re going to share a monologue at the top of the show, and then you’ll see us in different, you know. Either we’ll be together, it might be two of us, it might be one of us, who knows? To be honest, it’s like whoever gets drunk is the one that’s gonna be backstage—so if you see Amy and Regina out, you can just go, ‘Wanda’s drunk—she’s backstage drunk.’”
ICYMI, Amy made a joke in the opening monologue that the Academy hired three women to host this year because it was cheaper than hiring one guy. Oop! The entire opening monologue was hysterical, so we can’t wait to see how the rest of the night goes.
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