Jimmy Kimmel and John Mulaney both turned down hosting the 2025 Oscars: report
The Oscars tried — and failed — to get two major comedians to host next year’s awards ceremony.
Jimmy Kimmel and John Mulaney both declined offers to emcee the 2025 Academy Awards airing on ABC, People reported on Monday.
Kimmel, 56, has hosted the Oscars four times before, including the last two shows.
Mulaney, 41, has never hosted the Academy Awards before.
According to Deadline, Mulaney waited for Kimmel to pass on the hosting gig, and then he said no.
The Post has reached out to reps for both comedians for comment.
The 97th Academy Awards are set to air March 2, 2025.
Kimmel hosted the Oscars in 2017, 2018, 2023 and 2024.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times in February, the late-night host said that he nearly passed on hosting the 2024 ceremony.
“I did not think I would ever do it again,” he said. “I know how much work goes into [the Oscars], so I thought, ‘Yeah, I don’t necessarily want to do this ever again.’ “
However, he was convinced to emcee the 96th Oscars because of Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie.”
“I knew there was a movie that people had seen, and it just makes the job easier,” Kimmel explained. “I am sitting in a movie theater watching ‘Barbie’ and thinking, ‘Well, maybe I’ll do this again because at least I have a point of reference with everyone.’ “
When Kimmel was announced as host of the 2024 Oscars, he joked in a statement that he “always dreamed of hosting the Oscars exactly four times.”
Mulaney, meanwhile, has yet to host the Academy Awards.
He did, however, host the Academy’s 14th Governors Awards in January.
Mulaney also presented the award for Best Sound at the 2024 Oscars, during which he did a bit about Kevin Costner’s 1989 movie “Field of Dreams.”
“I couldn’t believe that guy. Amazing. I watched it a second time,” Costner said about Mulaney in April.
“I was very touched by it. I should talk to him because I was really impressed. He was a genius,” Costner added.
Aside from Kimmel, the most recent Oscar hosts include Regina Hall, Wanda Sykes and Amy Schumer in 2022, Chris Rock in 2016, Neil Patrick Harris in 2015, Ellen DeGeneres in 2014, and Seth MacFarlane in 2013.
There was no host from 2019 to 2021.
In January, Kevin Hart said he’ll never host the Oscars because “those gigs aren’t good gigs for comics.”
“It’s no shot to the Oscars, no shot to the Globes or anything else,” he said in an interview with Sky News. “Those just aren’t comedy-friendly environments anymore.”
Hart was actually tapped to do the gig in 2019, but he stepped down after old homophobic tweets of his surfaced, causing controversy.
The 2025 Academy Awards will air March 2 on ABC.
