Oscar 2023 secrets: Jimmy Kimmel's wife had 'harder' Will Smith jokes

The 95th Academy Awards have come and gone, with producer Molly McNearney — the wife of host — revealing new secrets about the telecast.

The show was devoid of any kind of controversial moment like last year’s infamous Oscar slap, which seemed to help with the rat — who was nominated for her first Oscar and performed her song Lift Me Up on the telecast — was mentioned so much during Kimmel’s opening monologue, which McNearney also revealed.

Other tidbits revealed included an explanation of the Tom Cruise joke that was a last-minute joke when it was learned Cruise would not be attending.

The show opened with a montage of some of the Oscar-nominated films, ending with a bit that showed Kimmel in the backseat of a jet with Cruise, that cut to Kimmel actually parachuting ‘into’ the Dolby Theater in Hollywood.

While Kimmel was being lifted into the Dolby Theater rafters just minutes before the show started, his monologue was still not locked, since McNearney revealed several of his jokes involved Rihanna actually seated.

‘We had two versions of the monologue.One if Rihanna was in her seat, one if she was not in her seat,’ McNearney explained.

‘One if Rihanna had her baby on her lap, which she wanted to do. And one if her baby was not on her lap. A lot of our jokes were kind of at the mercy of people being in their seats,’ she admitted.

Just minutes before the show started, McNearney said they were yelling up to Kimmel, ‘Rihanna is not in her seat!We’re going to adjust the prompter!’ 

There were other short-notice changes to the monologue that were made when the producing team learned that Tom Cruise would not be attending the Oscars.

McNearney explained that Kimmel had planned a significant chunk of his monologue dedicated to Tom Cruise and how his blockbuster sequel Top Gun: Maverick ‘saved’ movies and movie theaters, but when Tom decided not to show up, most of that was discarded.

‘Jimmy loves Tom.Tom had just been on the show the week before. And they talked about seeing each other and Jimmy was excited to tell him that we got real Navy pilots to do the flyover at the top of the Oscars. Jimmy was really disappointed he didn’t come,’ McNearney admitted.

There were reports that Cruise bowed out after learning that director Judd Apatow — who had made several jokes at Cruise’s expense at the DGA Awards — was helping with Kimmel’s monologue, though McNearney insists that is not true.

‘Jimmy tends to send his monologue to a group of people he trusts, comedy writers and comedians,» McNearney said. 

‘They don’t help with the monologue. They just tell him like that joke’s working, that joke’s not working. No, Judd was not writing or doing anything for the monologue,’ she said.

Kimmel did poke fun at Cruise’s longtime involvement in the Church of Scientology, stating, ‘Everyone loved Top Gun. Everybody. Tom Cruise with his shirt off in that beach football scene? L. Ron Hubba Hubba, you know what I mean?’

When asked if that joke would have remained in if Cruise had been at the Dolby Theater on Sunday night, McNearey said it wouldn’t have.

‘No. We had about a three minute chunk of the monologue dedicated to Tom Cruise, honoring him and his role in reviving the movie industry,’ she explained. 

‘We were so disappointed when we learned a few days before the Oscars that he wouldn’t be there. Jimmy loves him and really wanted to celebrate him,’ McNearney said.

She added that they had more jokes about indie movies like Tar and To Leslie, but, ‘it’s a real balance of making jokes about what that room has seen and what the home audience has seen.’

‘It’s really hard because jokes that would do really well with industry people, people at home don’t know what you’re talking about.You’ve got to try to please both audiences at the same time, which is a balancing act for sure,’ she admitted.

McNearney also revealed that Lady Gaga was finally confirmed to perform on Friday, since she’s currently filming Joker: Folie a Deux.

‘The irony, though, is she didn’t have a lot of time to think about it and committed a day or two before the show, otherwise I don’t know that she would have done something as stripped down as that.It was really memorable,’ she said.

McNearney also admitted that they had several more Will Smith/slap jokes written for the show, but they ultimately decided to scrap them.

‘We didn’t want to make this year all about last year.I cannot tell you how many Will Smith jokes we had that then we got rid of,’ she admitted.

‘We think that only the best for that room made it. There were certainly some that went harder, but we didn’t think that was our place to do that.That should be Chris Rock, not us,’ McNearney said.

However, she added they, ‘really liked the idea of making fun of the reaction to it last year.’

‘I think we’re all still in a bit of shock of how that went down and how after watching that violence everyone had to then sit through an acceptance speech,’ she said.

McNearney also confirmed that Michael B.Jordan, Pedro Pascal, n Michelle Yeoh, Steven Spielberg and Andrew Garfield were informed shortly before the monologue that they’d be singled out as part of Kimmel’s ‘security team,’ though three others did not know they would be singled out — Malala Yousafzai, Colin Farrell and Jessica Chastain — during an impromptu Q&A session.

‘Malala was an excellent sport.We ran into her at the Vanity Fair party. She couldn’t have been nicer, more gracious. She was worried, «I hope my answer was okay.» Well, we thought her answer was amazing,’ McNearney said.