Seth MacFarlane Turned Down a Second Oscar Hosting Gig
Word around town was that Seth MacFarlane was run out of Hollywood on a rail for opening the 2013 ceremony with a jaunty song called ‘We Saw Your Boobs’ celebrating all the nude scenes that the serious actresses up for awards had done. So deeply offensive and misogynist was MacFarlane for daring to talk about the nudity that was being celebrated with golden statues that he would never work in this town again.
The truth is, as revealed by MacFarlane on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast, is that the Oscars asked him back the next year because the song was a hit. Turns out that not everyone is a finger-wagging moralizing scold. MacFarlane just didn’t go back because he was busy making a movie.
Via IndieWire:
“I got asked back the year after I hosted,” MacFarlane recently confirmed on “WTF With Marc Maron.” “I guess because the numbers went up. I was making [“A Million Days to Die in the West”] in Santa Fe, I was so wrapped up in that that there was no way I’d finish this and stay alive if I tried to do the Oscars as well. Part of me wanted to say yes, but I realized the only reason I’d be saying yes is to kind of show up the detractors. That’s not a good enough reason to put in that kind of work.”
What MacFarlane did was, I thought, taking Hollywood down a notch. That was what I heard. Everyone is dressed up in bespoke outfits from the world’s most in-demand designers and wearing million dollar necklaces and acting like they’re doing the most important thing in the world and they’re all just slapping famous tits into movies to squeeze out a few extra bucks.
Turns out I was wrong and you have to go to Ricky Gervais to see an awards show host express utter contempt for everyone in the building. What MacFarlane did was a lot like what South Park did with Terrence and Phillip; he read the media calling his humor juvenile and misogynist and so he said “Okay, take this.”
“I’ve never mentioned this, but that gag came about because I read a lot of the press,” MacFarlane said. “You should never read your own press, but I read a lot of press leading up to the Oscars and it was a lot of really angry, foaming-at-the-mouth kind of stuff. It was just like, ‘Oh, I bet I know what he’s going to do and I hate him for it’ from a lot of these outlets. Mostly from the Hollywood press. It got to the point where I had to comment on it in some way. My original idea was very tame, old style song and dance. In a way, you helped create what you despise. It’s this idea of creating an alternate Oscars that was exactly what they were afraid would happen. That’s what gets forgotten. They always forgot context.”
I love it. I like Seth. Family Guy is still good for a few laughs in a mindless 22 minutes of comedy, and The Orville is a better Star Trek show than the Star Trek show on CBS All Access.
He also said he hasn’t been asked to host this year’s Oscars since Kevin Hart stepped down. A host still hasn’t been announced for the show, which is less than two months away.
