Third time’s the charm for Jimmy Kimmel.
The late-night veteran will return to host the 95th Academy Awards at the Dolby Theatre next year, in his third stint as host.
“Being invited to host the Oscars for a third time is either a great honor or a trap. Either way, I am grateful to the Academy for asking me so quickly after everyone good said no,” said Kimmel in a statement.
Kimmel famously hosted the Academy Awards for the first time in 2017, the year that La La Land was mistakenly announced as the winner over Moonlight. He returned the very next year to host once again.
“We’re super thrilled to have Jimmy score his hat trick on this global stage. We know he will be funny and ready for anything!” said executive producers and showrunners Glenn Weiss and Ricky Kirshner.
The Academy, under near leadership with CEO Bill Kramer and Academy President Janet Yang, have indicated that their aim was to lock a host much earlier than in years past. Last year’s hosts — Wanda Sykes, Amy Schumer and Regina Hall — were not announced until mid-February for the March 27, 2022 show. Weiss and Kirshner were announced in producers in September, and given the decades of live TV experience between them and Kimmel, Kramer and his team seem to be focused on reliability for the upcoming Oscars. As Kramer told VF in August, “We want to return to a show that has reverence for film and 95 years of the Oscars.”
Kimmel seems to have a change of heart from how he felt soon after his back-to-back hosting gigs when he said on a panel at TCA that he felt hosting was a “no win” situation. “It’s a very difficult job. Even when it seems like it was great, you go home and you’re like, ‘Oh, some people didn’t think it was great.’ If you don’t care what people will say, I think it’s a good gig,” he said at the time.
Kimmel, who also hosted the Emmys in 2012, 2016 and 2020, has led ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! since 2003, and recently renewed his contract for another three years, making him one of the longest-running talk show hosts in American television history.
Several other comedians have hosted the Oscars three times, including Steve Martin and Jerry Lewis — though they and Kimmel come nowhere close to Bob Hope‘s record of hosting the show 19 times.
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