The Governors Ball, just a short escalator ride up from the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood, is the first stop for winners and many of the other luminaries in the Oscars audience before they branch out to more prestigious (and hard-to-get-into) parties.
Nonetheless, it’s the best place to catch a glimpse of the winners on a small stage in the back of the ballroom where they go to get their statues engraved. (Among those we saw mounting the dais Sunday evening were supporting actress winner Da’Vine Joy Randolph in a shade of light blue that nicely complemented the Oscars art mounted above.)
Servers cut cramped zigzags across the packed ballroom wielding trays of bubbling hot mac ’n’ cheese, truffle pizza and petite cheeseburgers with tiny paper cones full of crisp fries while winners waited with their handlers to see their statues marked with their wins. As always, chef Wolfgang Puck’s tiny gold chocolate Oscars were piled high on the dessert table.
Our team at the 96th Academy Awards runs down the moments you need to know about and why they mattered.
Other star sightings at the ball included “Barbie” writer-director Greta Gerwig, laughing on her way in; supporting actor winner Robert Downey Jr. (“Oppenheimer”), who kept largely to himself — looking introspective before being swept out of the room with his statue; and “American Fiction” nominee Jeffrey Wright, who sat with a few friends close at a far side of the room. “Poor Things” nominee Mark Ruffalo was gregarious on the escalator ride to the party, joking about how he really thought he might be replaced by pal Oscar Isaac during the shoot and how he didn’t quite realize the enormous effect the film would have after it was released.
But attracting as much attention as any of the honorees were Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger, who was thronged by well-wishers, fellow executives like Disney Television Group’s Craig Erwich and a gaggle of press, and Jimmy Kimmel, who hosted the well-received telecast on Disney-owned ABC.
Kimmel kept an even keel as he accepted praise for handling a tough gig — including one passerby who called him “the best Oscars host ever” — and seemed undaunted about reopening his social media after a late-ceremony joke about former President Trump, who criticized Kimmel’s performance on Truth Social. Whatever he does, Kimmel sighed, “half the people hate it and the other half love it.”
From the Oscars to the Emmys.
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