Highlights from the 2026 Oscars hosted by Conan O’Brien: from big wins to heavy goodbyes
This Oscar cycle’s heavyweight battle is finally over. The politically charged action comedy “One Battle After Another” just managed to outmuscle Ryan Coogler’s musically driven vampire thriller “Sinners.”
It was a 3 hour and 40 minute whirl through cinema and celebration, with Michael B. Jordan winning best actor for “Sinners” and Jessie Buckley winning for “Hamnet,” making her the first Irish performer to ever win in the category.
There was electricity when Autumn Durald Arkapaw became the first woman and Black person to win the cinematography award for “Sinners,” asking all the women in the Dolby Theatre to stand up because moments like this don’t happen without women “standing up for you and advocating for you.”
Here were some other show highlights:
The battle is over for one filmmaker
Paul Thomas Anderson, one of the most respected filmmakers of his generation, finally won an Oscar. Then he won another. Then he won for best picture.
He first won best adapted screenplay for “One Battle After Another” and then was crowned best director. “You make a guy work hard for this,” he said. Anderson was back onstage for the night’s final award — best picture.
“Let’s have a martini. This is amazing,” he said.
Anderson had been nominated 14 times previously, including five times for screenplays and three times for best director. His films include “Boogie Nights,” “There Will Be Blood” and “Magnolia.”
“I wrote this movie for my kids, to say sorry for the housekeeping mess that we left in this world we’re handing off to them,” Anderson said onstage after winning for his screenplay. “But also with the encouragement that they will be the generation that hopefully brings us some common sense and decency.”
Even Cassandra Kulukundis, who served as the casting director on past Anderson films, hoped he would win an award himself while accepting the first new completive Oscar category in over two decades for “One Battle After Another.”
She beat him to a win by just minutes.
Another long wait for Oscar hardware
Amy Madigan, the night’s first winner, had to wait a long time to celebrate an Oscar win. The gap between her first ever Oscar nomination and first win was 40 years — handing her the record wait for a best supporting actress.
Madigan’s first Oscar nomination was for 1985’s “Twice in a Lifetime,” losing to Anjelica Huston. She won Sunday for playing an unrecognizable and utterly mesmerizing oddball aunt in “Weapons,” a supernatural thriller about missing children. Madigan had earlier picked up wins at the Critics Choice and Actor Awards.
Aunt Gladys’ smeared, heavy makeup, strange hair and large glasses became a popular internet meme and was even played up by Oscars host Conan O’Brien in his opening skit, looking like Gladys as he raced through appearances in other nominated movies chased by children.
On hearing her name, Madigan collapsed into the arms of her husband, actor Ed Harris. Onstage, she thanked film writer-director Zach Cregger for giving her a part in “Weapons” she could “grab by the throat.” She last thanked “my beloved Ed,” adding: “None of this would mean anything if he wasn’t by my side.”
A heavy goodbye to the Reiners
A stage of stars bid farewell to Rob Reiner, led by a long friend and colleague, Billy Crystal.
Crystal kicked off the in memoriam section by saying he met Reiner while cast as a best friend of Reiner’s on “All in the Family” in 1975.
Reiner’s movies included “This Is Spinal Tap,” “Stand By Me,” “When Harry Met Sally…,” “Misery,” “A Few Good Men” and “The Princess Bride.”
“My friend Rob’s movies will last for lifetimes because they were about what makes us laugh and cry and what we aspire to be: Far better in his eyes, far kinder, far funnier and far more human,” Crystal said.
Reiner was killed along with his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, in December. Their son, Nick Reiner, has been charged with two counts of murder.
After Crystal’s speech, he revealed a stage filled with stars who shone in Reiner’s films, including Meg Ryan, Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Kathy Bates, Kiefer Sutherland, Demi Moore, Jerry O’Connell, Annette Bening, Mandy Patinkin, Fred Savage and Cary Elwes.
In memoriam and Redford
The in memoriam section then highlighted those lost during 2025, like Catherine O’Hara, Diane Keaton, Gene Hackman, Robert Duvall, Brigitte Bardot, Michael Madsen, Terence Stamp, Diane Ladd, Sally Kirkland, Tom Stoppard, Malcolm-Jamal Warner and Val Kilmer.
Barbra Streisand then stepped up to honor her co-star in “The Way We Were,” Robert Redford.
“He was thoughtful and bold. I called him an intellectual cowboy who blazed his own trail, and won the Academy Award for best director, and I miss him now more than ever, even though he loved teasing me,” Streisand said.
She then sang a snippet of “The Way We Were,” which she last performed during the 2013 ceremony, when she sang it as an homage to the late composer Marvin Hamlisch.
Two stunning song performances
The Oscars had only two musical numbers but they were Grammy-worthy.
Singer-actor Miles Caton and songwriter Raphael Saadiq performed the deeply bluesy, slinky song “I Lied to You” from “Sinners,” joined by an ensemble that included Misty Copeland, Eric Gales, Buddy Guy, Brittany Howard, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, Jayme Lawson, Li Jun Li, Bobby Rush, Shaboozey and Alice Smith in a tribute to the film’s visual and musical style.
The camera swept in and among the writhing bodies in a rollicking, kinetic performance.
“KPop Demon Hunters” later celebrated its win as best animated feature by opening its performance of “Golden” with a fusion of traditional Korean instrumentalists and dance, with dancers in gold waving golden fabric flags.
Then Ejae, Audrey Nuna and Rei Ami — the singing voices behind HUNTR/X in the film — belted out “Golden” as members of the audience waved light sticks.
Then “Golden” won the Oscar for best original song, a first for K-pop.
The coolest part was seeing dancers from each song appear in the other’s, a kind of communication between Delta blues and Asian pop.
‘Bridesmaids’ give us a bouquet
Melissa McCarthy, Maya Rudolph, Rose Byrne, Kristen Wiig and Ellie Kemper celebrated 15 years after “Bridesmaids” hit theaters by showing everyone their funny bones haven’t aged.
“Now, we are not good with numbers, but we figured out backstage that means we shot this movie in 1883,” Wiig joked.
The group — presenting best original score and best sound — had fun at the expense of Stellan Skarsgård, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jacobi Jupe of “Hamnet.”
They pretended to read messages from the crowd, including one from DiCaprio that accused Byrne of staring at him. “I have been staring at you,” Byrne replied. “I thought you were somebody else.”
Rudolph leaned into her dimwit persona when she wondered: “Earlier today, when I was counting my money, I asked myself, “What is sound?”
There was also a mini-“Avengers” reunion with Chris Evans and Robert Downey Jr. presenting best adapted screenplay. And a “Moulin Rouge!” reunion with Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor. And there was a Pullman family reunion when Bill teamed up with son, Jack.
Second time’s a charm, Conan
Conan O’Brien hit almost every note on Sunday — savage, playful, heartfelt and dumb.
The second-time host predicted he’d be the last human Oscar MC. “Next year, it will be a Waymo with a tux,” he joked.
He also had a jab at Timothée Chalamet, who got into hot water when he seemed to call ballet and opera dying art forms. “They’re just mad you left out jazz,” O’Brien quipped.
He reached for a Jeffrey Epstein joke when he noted that it was the first time since 2012 that there were no British actors nominated. “A British spokesperson said, ‘Yeah, well at least we arrest our pedophiles.'”
But he also got poetic and sweet when he noted that 31 countries across six continents were represented at the Oscars.
“Every film we salute is a product of thousands of people speaking different language, working hard to make something of beauty,” O’Brien said. “We pay tribute tonight, not just to film, but to the ideals of global artistry, collaboration, patience, resilience and that rarest of qualities today: optimism.”
Of course, sometimes his bits fell flat, like the time he used a leaf blower onstage and a gag about memes with Leonardo DiCaprio.
For more coverage of this year’s Oscars, visit: https://apnews.com/hub/academy-awards
—Mark Kennedy, AP Entertainment Writer