‘SNL’s Bowen Yang Is at the Center of the Dumbest Oscar Controversy

The world may seem pretty bleak at the moment, but at least we have the Academy Awards to look forward to. No, really. While the Oscars may have an unfortunate history of rewarding garbage movies, celebrating terrible people and indulging the musical whims of Billy Crystal, this year could be different. 

For starters, instead of giving the hosting job to Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Kimmel, nobody at all or Jimmy Kimmel, the Academy has thankfully hired Conan O’Brien. And we have no doubt that Conan will ultimately prove to be the anti-Franco.

While we’re still over a month away from the actual ceremony, the Oscar nominations are set to be announced this Thursday, at the least convenient time possible for every U.S. time zone, as per tradition. 

Further indicating that the Academy has good hiring instincts this year, the nominations will be announced by two funny, likable young stars: Saturday Night Live’s Bowen Yang and fake Saturday Night Live’s Rachel Sennott. 

But it just wouldn’t be awards season without ridiculous controversies. In response to the recent announcement, film critic Guy Lodge suggested that it was “tacky” to have “a star of one of the year’s certain Best Picture nominees announce the nominations.”

Since Saturday Night’’s chances of being nominated for Best Picture are pretty slim, presumably he’s referring to Yang, who has a supporting role in the Oscar hopeful Wicked (although, in a just world, Sennott would have been nominated for her work in I Used to Be Funny).

But this statement received a lot of pushback from people on social media, who pointed out that Yang is far from being one of the “stars” of Wicked. He has a minor part that was probably even smaller thanks to the authoritarian scheduling demands of Lorne Michaels. Others noted that the same exact thing happened just last year. One of the co-hosts of the nomination event was Jack Quaid, who similarly had a small role in the Best Picture nominee, and eventual winner, Oppenheimer. 

As for claims that enlisting Yang to read some names off of a teleprompter at an ungodly early hour is “tacky,” one could argue that the Oscars has always been tacky. In fact, this move doesn’t even come close to cracking the long list of the tackiest moments in Oscar history. This is the same institution that once gave us Rob Lowe belting out “Proud Mary” with Snow White. They maxed out their tackiness quota before Bowen Yang was even born. 

We’ve gotten a lot of dreary Oscar content over the years, let’s not give them grief for hiring entertaining comedians that people like to headline a glorified press conference. Plus, Yang and Sennott could take the stage in their pajamas and groggily announce that Madame Web is the one and only Best Picture nominee, and they still wouldn’t be the most regrettable actors hired for that job.