The 2025 Oscars will be hosted by none other than Conan O’Brien, the veteran talk show host who was a permanent fixture of late-night television between 1993 and 2021. The comedian will be replacing ABC’s main talk show star Jimmy Kimmel, who’s hosted the last two Academy Awards ceremonies but declined to return for a third year in a row. He’ll also be following in the footsteps of three other late-night regulars, including the great Johnny Carson.

Conan was considered the elder statesman of American talk shows by the time he became a full-time podcaster four years ago. So it feels like a full-circle moment to see him taking over Oscars duties from Kimmel, who’s long been an admirer of Conan’s and took after him in the talk show game, launching his own show Jimmy Kimmel Live! in 2003. It’s unsurprising that the Academy has chosen another host who’s used to chatting away to cinema’s biggest names up to five nights a week. However Conan’s Oscars performance goes down, he’s unlikely to be the last talk show star to continue this tradition.

Conan Will Be The 5th Different Talk Show Star To Host The Oscars

Jimmy Kimmel Is Pᴀssing On The Baton

This Academy Awards ceremony will be the first one that former Simpsons writer Conan has ever hosted, although he’s following a long line of talk show hosts who’ve taken the reins at the Oscars before him. Prior to Kimmel, who’s hosted the ceremony four times, there was pioneering satirist Jon Stewart. The Daily Show presenter has hosted the Academy Awards twice, in 2006 and 2008. Late Night legend David Letterman has hosted the Oscars once, in 1995, and Tonight Show тιтan Johnny Carson has hosted five times. Only Bob Hope and Billy Crystal have done it more times.

Talk show hosts are generally considered a safe pair of hands by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Their day (or night) job makes them seasoned professionals at handling big entertainment industry egos and unexpected mishaps, both of which are in plentiful supply at every Oscars ceremony. Talk show hosts also know how to deliver the kind of light-hearted, heavily-scripted joke that invokes canned laughter but doesn’t poke the vanity of movie stars too hard, the kind they tell on a daily basis in the opening monologue of their shows.

This is exactly the skillset that Oscars organizers are looking for. They need the ceremony to run smoothly without too many raised eyebrows, particularly in light of the backlash Ricky Gervais has provoked while hosting the Golden Globes during the past decade and a half, and the controversy around Will Smith’s actions when Chris Rock was Oscars host. That’s why they’re turning to Conan, and they’ve fallen back on Kimmel in recent years whenever the going got tough. It’s why they turned to Carson, too, after a string of calamitous joint-hosting efforts by various actors throughout the 1970s.

Johnny Carson Began This Oscars Tradition In 1979

The “King of Late Night” Was The First Talk Presenter To Host

With the veteran Bob Hope getting too old to keep returning as host whenever a safe bet was needed by the Academy, there was only one other person in the world of entertainment they felt they could turn to. Johnny Carson was known as the undisputed “king” of late-night talk shows in 1979, with his version of The Tonight Show, the longest-running talk show of all time and the only game in town back then. He ticked every box when it came to professionalism and all-round showmanship, resulting in Oscars organizers inviting him back to host for four consecutive years.

Carson returned to host the awards for the fifth and final time in 1984, and the Academy didn’t really find itself a host that could compete with his smooth delivery and quick wit until Crystal came along in 1990. By then, Carson was no longer the only talk show host around, with Letterman’s Late Night following The Tonight Show on NBC. Conan O’Brien’s own late-night television berth was just around the corner.

Conan Hosting The Oscars Was A Long Time Coming

He’s Had To Wait Three Decades For This Moment

It seems strange that Conan O’Brien hasn’t been asked to host the Oscars before now. He’s the biggest-name talk show star not to have hosted the ceremony, and it appears to go against recent Oscars tradition that it’s taken more than 30 years for him to be asked, since he started hosting Late Night in 1993. Even Jimmy Fallon, the only current talk show host other than Kimmel to have been in the job for more than a decade, was asked to host the 2013 Academy. He turned down the gig, claiming it wasn’t his year to do it (via The Hollywood Reporter).

Conan essentially got the role of host for the 2025 Oscars because Jimmy Kimmel said he wasn’t coming back for a third year in a row. He might have been a high-profile talk show host for three decades, but he’s always been viewed as an irreverent outsider by entertainment industry executives. The Tonight Show debacle with Jay Leno in 2010 help Conan either, as it perhaps suggested to ABC bosses that he couldn’t pull in high enough TV ratings for their flagship awards ceremony coverage. In any case, the comedian deserves his sH๏τ at hosting the Academy Awards this year. It’s been a long time coming.

Sources: The Hollywood Reporter