James Franco had a revealing interview, with out of all the publications, Playboy and in it he talked about hosting the Oscars. The Oscar nominee, who will most likely never be asked to host the Oscars again, talked about why he did and what went wrong.
PLAYBOY: Some might question how seriously you took co-hosting the Oscars show with Anne Hathaway.
FRANCO: When they asked me to do it, I laughed and said, “How am I going to get out of this?†I had one of the best acting experiences working with [director] Danny Boyle on 127 Hours, and we made something great. The studio was making a push for my best actor nomination, and people had been talking about it. At the time I thought no one had won an Oscar the year they hosted the show—I learned later that David Niven had, about 50 years ago—and I thought my hosting the show would cut down my chances, take some of the pressure off and say to people, or at least to myself, “You’re not going to worry about this.†I had done a bit for the Oscars before with Seth Rogen that was a big hit. I felt confident I could do it. I mean, what are the host’s responsibilities? You have an opening monologue, maybe a bit or two in the middle of the show, and then the rest is just reading names. They knew I could rehearse only on weekends because of school, but how much do you have to rehearse? They told me they knew I wasn’t Chris Rock and that they had designed the show around me.
PLAYBOY: How did it go so wrong?
FRANCO: It’s hard to talk about because it’s like assigning blame—not a fun thing to do. For three or four weeks we shot the promos and the little film that played in the opening. In the last week, when we really started focusing on the script for the live show and did a run-through, I said to the producer, “I don’t know why you hired me, because you haven’t given me anything. I just don’t think this stuff’s going to be good.â€
You know what he is right, they didn’t write for him. The jokes were lame and as he said Anne and him were polar opposites and so much so it didn’t work.
I kind of feel bad for him because he is not going to live this down for a long time. I mean I won’t forget about anytime soon.
