KUALA LUMPUR – Are jorts worse than a naked John Cena? You decide.
In a skit just before presenting the Academy Award for best costume design, host Jimmy Kimmel was referencing the 1974 Oscars ceremony, when a streaker ran across the stage while British actor David Niven was introducing Elizabeth Taylor.
“Can you imagine if a nude man ran across the stage today?” Kimmel asked twice, in an overt prompt for wrestling legend John Cena to appear.
As Cena popped his head out of a backdrop from the side stage, visibly topless, the crowd burst into raucous laughs and wolf whistles.
“I changed my mind, I don’t want to do the streaker bit anymore. I just don’t feel right about it. This is an elegant event,” Cena told Kimmel.
John Cena walks onto the #Oscars stage. https://t.co/UNgGySGz3r pic.twitter.com/zPrsl5oiCy
— Variety (@Variety) March 11, 2024
Kimmel had countered with Cena regularly “wrestling naked”, to which he replied, “I wrestle in jorts”.
“Jorts are worse than naked!” Kimmel said while forcing Cena to walk to the centre of the stage with the envelope containing the winner’s name.
Inching sideways while trying to conceal his modesty with the envelope, Cena slowly made his way to the microphone, much to the amusement of the audience.
“Costumes… They are so important… I cannot open the envelope.”
Kimmel, in frustration, helped to announce the nominees. As the ceremony cut back to the stage, the host was already helping to “dress” Cena in a toga with what looks like a curtain.
“There, you look beautiful,” he told Cena.
Following that, it was announced that Holly Waddington took the Oscar for best costume design for Poor Things, beating Jacqueline Durran for Barbie, Jacqueline West for Killer of the Flower Moon, Janty Yates and Dave Crossman for Napoleon and Ellen Mirojnick for Oppenheimer.
Poor Things, starring Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo and Willem Dafoe, also bagged the Oscars for makeup and hairstyling, as well as best production design.
Stone plays Bella Baxter, who is resurrected via a brain transplant during Victorian times and goes on a journey of self-discovery. – March 11, 2024