Jimmy Kimmel praises Messi the dog for peeing on Matt Damon's Hollywood Walk of Fame star: 'Such a good boy'

“Messi flew all the way in from France to do that," the host cheered.

Jimmy Kimmel is praising Hollywood’s best boy, Anatomy of a Fall star Messi the dog, for his amazing performance peeing on Matt Damon's Walk of Fame star at the end of the 2024 Oscars.

The comedian, who hosted the event for the fourth time on Sunday, said that the bow tie-wearing border collie worked "very hard" while filming all of his pre-taped segments for the show, but none appeared to bring him more joy than Messi making, well, a mess of Damon's star.

“Such a good boy. A really good boy,” Kimmel, who has been engaged in a years-long faux feud with Damon, cheered during Monday’s episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live. “Messi flew all the way in from France to do that.”

While Messi was spotted in his seat at the beginning of Sunday’s ceremony, Kimmel revealed that the canine actor didn’t actually end up staying in the audience for very long because he kept barking during an earlier rehearsal. (And, really, who could blame Messi for being excited — it’s Hollywood’s biggest night, after all!)

"Our plan was to have [Messi] sitting in the audience throughout the show including my monologue,” the host explained. “But then it turns out, we did a rehearsal, the dog was barking like crazy the whole time because he’s a dog, which was making it hard to tell jokes.”

For his part, Kimmel said he found Messi’s barking “really funny” throughout their test run. “It was as if we’d released a dozen squirrels into the theater, that’s how much barking [was happening],” he recalled. “And at one point, I thought, ‘Oh, to hell with it, let’s just let the dog bark throughout the show,’ but that wouldn’t have been great during the In Memoriam montage.”

So, instead of having Messi gleefully barking up a storm, Kimmel said that they “pre-taped some reaction shots” of the 7-year-old dog to utilize throughout the ceremony. That includes a hilarious cutaway where Messi could be seen clapping with his paws when Robert Downey Jr. won the award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Oppenheimer.

Kimmel then pulled back the curtain on the hilarious clip by sharing a behind-the-scenes photo that showed a prop masters waving a pair of dog legs from underneath Messi's seat. He added, "That’s the movie magic, or the TV magic.”

Unfortunately, it's unclear if Messi was still in the audience when Anatomy of a Fall's writer-director Justine Triet and Arthur Harari won the award for Best Original Screenplay at the event. However, we hope that he got to celebrate with some good treats and head scratches.

Watch Kimmel discuss the 2024 Oscars in the clip above.

Check out more from EW's The Awardist, featuring exclusive interviews, analysis, and our podcast diving into all the highlights from the year's best films, TV, and music.

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• Messi, the handsome Anatomy of a Fall dog, has his own seat at the Oscars

• Oscars ends with Messi the dog peeing on Matt Damon's Hollywood Walk of Fame star

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.