The 93rd Academy Awards almost kicked off — with disaster! The Apr. 25 broadcast began with Regina King carrying an Oscar trophy from outside of Los Angeles’ Union Station into the set erected inside the terminal. She marched down the long walkway in a glamorous Louis Vuitton gown with 62,000 sequins and 4,000 crystals, per Variety — like she was born into it. When she got up on stage, she placed the Oscar down on the podium…and nearly fell over! Thankfully, Regina, 50, recovered her footing, cracked a joke (“live TV, here we go”), and continued to open the show.
“Regina king almost fell on stage, but this year Chris Evans isn’t here to steady her,” one fan tweeted, referencing the time that the Captain America star helped her up during the 2019 Oscars ceremony. “Love an on-stage trip to start the show! Regina King nailed that long strut tho. Looking gorgeous,” added another. “The #Oscars set is beautiful, but MY GOD, SO many steps for people to trip down. Predicting a whole host of Jennifer Lawrence moments in addition to Regina King’s onstage misstep.”
Going into the 2021 ceremony, there was a lot of buzz over how the 93 rd Academy Awards were going to look like. Producers Steven Soderbergh (Traffic, Ocean’s Eleven, Erin Brockovich, Magic Mike, etc.), producer Stacy Sher (Django Unchained, Erin Brockovich), and Jessie Collins, who has produced this year’s Super Bowl and the 2021 Grammy Awards, promised that the show would feel like a movie instead of a televised ceremony. “Its cutting patterns, the way it sounds, everything is going to feel more like a film,” Soderbergh told the Los Angeles Times. The producers instigated some rules to pull that off, pressing nominees to attend in person (and banning Zoom acceptance speeches.)
“There was a lot of talk about our “anti-Zoom stance,’” Soderbergh told the Los Angeles Times. “For us, it was just frustrating to imagine this stunning set that David Rockwell is building at Union Station, and then, for a high point, you cut to somebody sitting on their couch with a laptop in front of them. It’s the f—ing Oscars. It’s not a webinar. So we’re just trying to get people somewhere where we can really make it look great.”
With so many theatres and cinemas shuttered due to COVID, Soderbergh told the Times that the Oscars also presented a moment to rekindle a love of movies. “The last 14 or 15 months have been unprecedented in their devastation and dislocation, and you have to acknowledge that while at the same time offering up a little bit of pain relief for a couple of hours,” the sex, lies, and videotape director told the Times. To try to strip away the self-importance of it without becoming snarky or insincere — it is a real balance. We want it to be joyful, and we do want people to rebuild their relationship with going to the movies. We’re all in a very synchronized place in terms of what the tone has to be. But I guess we’ll find out.”