Oscars 2025 opening: Conan O’Brien spoofs The Substance, more

We knew in advance of the 2025 Oscars that Conan O’Brien would be the host, and that sent our expectations into the stratosphere. We know that he is hilarious in almost any setting, in addition to being wild, zany, and willing to poke fun at himself.

If there was any concern that we had at all heading into the show tonight, it was that the audience was not going to enjoy his comedy as much as they should.

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Before we even got to the Conan monologue, we saw a couple of musical numbers courtesy of Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo — an opportunity to both tribute Wicked and, at the same time, the city of Los Angeles, which has endured so much.

Then, Conan arrived, and in quite possibly the strangest way possible. Demi Moore took the substance, and out came Conan … who then had to dig through her in order to find his shoe. He then hit a few self-deprecating jokes before going into jabs at Wicked’s story, the run time of The Brutalist, and Conclave being about the Catholic Church in a way that you would not expect.

As for another surprise, he actually chose to directly reference Karla Sofía Gascón and the controversy over her old social-media posts. That is not something we would have predicted, but she was actually in the audience and tried to have a laugh.

In general…

We would say that this entire monologue was vintage Conan — it felt like a bigger version of one of his old late-night monologues and we missed this on television. (His best joke may have been “Bob Dylan wanted to be here tonight, but not that badly.”)

Related – Be sure to get some more news on the Oscars right now

What do you most want to see moving into the 2025 Oscars?

Did you think that Conan ended up delivering with the entire opening? Be sure to share right now in the attached comments! Once you do just that, keep coming back for some other updates.