Oscars 2024 Behind the Scenes: The Best Things Winners Said After Winning

The post Oscars 2024 Behind the Scenes: The Best Things Winners Said After Winning appeared first on Consequence.

It feels like backstage, but technically it isn’t — the interview room at the Oscars, where Consequence had a seat for the 96th edition of the Academy Awards, is located in a building adjacent to the Dolby Theater, where journalists from all around the world pack around tables to ask questions of winners fresh from their latest victory. Holding their brand new trophy (or two, in the case of Christopher Nolan), the happiest people in a five-block radius told press all about the importance of this night for them, the significance of their win, and a whole lot more as the ceremony progressed.

If you see someone missing below (::cough cough:: Robert Downey Jr.), it’s because they chose to skip the interview room, which — fair enough! Oscars night is a party, after all, and not everyone’s idea of a party includes a quick stop at a press conference. But plenty of winners did make an appearance, and below are some of their best quotes.

Best Picture: Oppenheimer

Oppenheimer (Universal)

With the conflict in Gaza on many peoples’ minds this evening, Christopher Nolan and the producers of Oppenheimer were asked about what kind of message people might find in the Oscar-winning film.

“I don’t like to speak too specific about messages of films I make because I feel that if cinema is didactic, it tends not to work dramatically so well,” Nolan replied. “As far as any kind of broader message, the thing that I would like to point out is, the film ends on what I consider a dramatically necessary moment of despair, but in reality I don’t think despair is the answer to the nuclear question… It’s very important that rather than despair, in reality, people are looking at advocacy, they’re looking at organizations who are working to pressure politicians and leaders to reduce the number of nuclear weapons on our planet and make the world safer.”

Recollecting their most memorable moments making the film, producers Emma Thomas and Charles Roven both mentioned their “profound” reactions to watching the first cut. For Nolan, though, he called out “the first hair and makeup tests. There was something about seeing Cillian put that hat on and Robert Downey Jr. with his head shaved back and Emily Blunt in old-age makeup.”

Added Nolan, “We did all that on the first test. We shot it on the very first black-and-white IMAX film that had ever been made, and we projected it on an IMAX screen over at the Citywalk at Universal, and that was a very special moment, special to realize what the actors were going to do, and that the thing was going to work, and to see that technical side of things that Hoyte [van Hoytema] was bringing to the table with photography. It was remarkable and that will always stay with me.”

Actor in a Leading Role: Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer

Oppenheimer (Universal)

After working on so many projects with Christopher Nolan, Cillian Murphy made a point of noting the importance of their collaboration together over literal decades. “You know, we’ve been working together for 20 years,” Murphy told press. “I think he is the perfect director. He is an extraordinary writer and he is an extraordinary producer and he is extraordinary visually and an extraordinary director of actors and he presents this film like no one else does in the world.”

Continued Murphy, “I just can’t believe my luck. You know, I did a screen test for him when I was a kid and I thought that would be it — it would be just enough to be in a room with Chris for a couple of hours. And here we are.”

Murphy was also asked if he would be content with his role as J. Robert Oppenheimer defining his career. “Very content,” he said. “I mean, you know, you’ve got to move forward, but this has been a huge, huge moment for me… I’m very proud that this is a film that is provocative and that asks questions and is challenging but yet, you know, so many people want to see it. So I’m really, really proud of that.”

Actress in a Leading Role: Emma Stone, Poor Things

Poor Things (Searchlight Pictures)

Emma Stone, in the press room, still seemed flustered after her surprise win over Killers of the Flower Moon’s Lily Gladstone. “I think I blacked out. Yes, I was very shocked. I still feel like I’m – I’m spinning a little bit. It’s a huge honor, and yes, I’m very surprised.”

Stone also revealed that the dress issue she mentioned having during her acceptance speech on stage had been resolved. “Right when I came back, they sewed me back in, which was wonderful. I genuinely do think I busted it during ‘I’m Just Ken.’ I was so amazed by Ryan and what he was doing, and that number just blew my mind. And I was right there, and I just was going for it, and, you know, things happen.”

Stone also explained what she learned from playing adult baby Bella Baxter, in her most recent collaboration with Yorgos Lanthimos: “She is a character that is so, so important to me. The chance to play a person starting from scratch, but in a total metaphorical, can’t-really-happen-in-real-life way… getting to chart that course and realize that she was just full of joy and curiosity and true love, of not just the good, but the challenging in life… that was an amazing lesson to take with me and to try to get to live in the shoes of every day. I really miss playing her ever since we wrapped filming, which was a long time ago. It was like two and a half years ago. I miss Bella.”

Actress in a Supporting Role: Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers

The Holdovers (Focus Features)

Da’Vine Joy Randolph spoke passionately about what this win meant to her, even while acknowledging that “I think you’d be selling yourself short if you make it about the awards. It’s too hard of a career.” Said the Oscar winner, “The beautiful thing and the hard thing about being an actor is that it requires you to have resilience and self-confidence and belief in yourself when no one else does, when you are constantly getting ‘no’s and you’re saying, ‘Nope, I’m going to keep going.'”

Randolph also said that what stood out for her about the process of awards season was “the camaraderie… I didn’t know if it was going to be a dog-eat-dog thing, if it would be, like, you know, really aggressive. And what’s been so beautiful is having this relationship with people that are going through the same thing with you, a support system that you can rely on and the friends that I’ve made because of it.”

Paying it forward also matters to Randolph, who said that “it’s imperative, because the people who’ve done it before me allowed me to be in this position now. And so the type of work I do, my strive for authenticity, for quality, allows there to be a new standard set where we can tell universal stories in Black and brown bodies, and it can be accepted and enjoyed amongst the masses. It’s not just Black TV or Black movies or Black people, but instead a universal performance that can be enjoyed by all.”

Music (Original Song): Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell, “What Was I Made For?” from Barbie

Finneas O’Connell and Billie Eilish, courtesy of AMPAS

After winning their second Oscars (at the ages of 22 and 26), songwriters Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell were asked what they would say to young people interested in a career in music. “I would say don’t do it for other people, don’t do it for like numbers, or sort of specific like fame,” Eilish responded. “I would say, give yourself some time and do what you love. And I know that’s kind of easier said than done, because some of us don’t even know what we love. But — but you will figure it out. You will find it.”

Asked about the success of Barbie, O’Connell said that “I think it’s down to a lot of things. I think it’s great storytelling. I think people went into that movie expecting to see a spectacle and expecting to laugh, and I think that Greta and Margot brought a lot more to that… When we went into that movie for the first time thinking about writing a song for it, we thought, ‘Oh, this is so much more than we thought we were going in to see.’ We were so moved by it. So just such an honor to be part of the family.”

Added Eilish, “I think it made a lot of people feel very seen and I think that can be rare, especially as a woman. And I think that really resonated and traveled the world, feeling seen and heard and understood.”

Animated Short Film: War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John and Yoko

War Is Over

In discussing their core inspiration for their Oscar-winning short, director Dave Mullins and producer Brad Booker told the press that the legacy of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” meant, as Mullins said, “we had to take it seriously. I think for John and Yoko, it’s their most famous song that they’ve played at this point.”

“It surpassed ‘Imagine’ because at Christmas it gets a giant surge, as you can imagine,” added Booker.

“We really just looked at what John and Yoko were trying to say with the song,” Mullins said. “We had Sean Ono Lennon as a creative executive producer, and we just tried to honor the antiwar message, and tried to do it in a creative way that was fun and made you cry.”

A war project at this moment in them has a very different impact than it might. “I think that the takeaway from it is, that, you know, there’s a lot of fighting, there’s a lot of war, there’s other ways to solve it. And that’s what I think John and Yoko were trying to say, is maybe talk a little more, kill a little less. That’s the idea and that’s what we tried to show in the film,” Mullins said.

About Sean Ono Lennon’s shoutout to his mother from the stage, Mullins said he didn’t know it was coming, because “we never know what Sean’s going to do… He’s very charming. He always comes up with the right thing to say, and that was the right thing to say. We love that family, and we got to meet Yoko recently. So we feel very blessed.”

Animated Feature Film: The Boy and the Heron

The Boy and the Heron (GKIDS)

Director Hayao Miyazaki and producer Toshio Suzuki was not in attendance at the Oscars, but Studio Ghibli COO Kiyofumi Nakajima asked press to forgive them for that, as the two men are “kind of up in the age bracket.” Nakajima then read a statement from Suzuki, translated by an interpreter and excerpted in part below:

“This film began with the retracting of the retirement statement that Hayao Miyazaki made. And following that, we spent seven years producing this film… This was truly a difficult project to bring to completion. I am very appreciative that the work that was created after overcoming these difficulties has been seen by so many people around the world, and that it has received this recognition. Both Hayao Miyazaki and I have aged considerably. I am grateful to receive such an honor at my age and taking this as a message to continue our work, I will devote myself to work harder in the future.”

Costume Design: Holly Waddington, Poor Things

Poor Things (Searchlight Pictures)

A first-time winner, costume designer Holly Waddington has no idea where she’s going to put her Oscar. “I don’t have lots of awards. So I don’t have a cabinet or anything like that. I’ve got a couple for this job, and they’re on the kitchen table at the moment, because my children just love looking at them and they keep talking about them all the time. So I don’t know. Where should I put them?”

When it came to designing the wildly imaginative costumes work by Bella Baxter, Waddington said that “the biggest challenge was trying to tell the story of [Bella’s] development. It was just a constant challenge for me… It’s like a jigsaw puzzle because you have to move so rapidly through different stages, and I had to tell that story through clothes.”

Makeup and Hairstyling: Nadia Stacey, Mark Coulier, and Josh Weston, Poor Things

Poor Things (Searchlight Pictures)

Make-up artist Nadia Stacey expressed her excitement over tonight’s win by noting that “we’re not just hair, makeup and accessories. We’re part of the storytelling process, and it is a huge part of an actor’s getting into character. So, it’s incredible, particularly on something like this film where we created this kind of whole new world and characters. For us to be recognized for that is amazing.”

Stacey noted that she’s now done three projects with Emma Stone (including The Favourite and Cruella), “and every single one has been completely different. We have created a space now because we’re friends and we have that kind of trust relationship that she just let’s me come up with lots of crazy ideas and things to try on her.”

Writing (Adapted Screenplay): Cord Jefferson, American Fiction

American Fiction (MGM)

Writer/director Cord Jefferson, celebrating his first win for his first film, doubled down on his speech noting that studios, instead of funding one $200 million movie, could budget for 20 $10 million movies instead.

“What I tried to convey in my speech is that there’s an audience for things that are different. There is an appetite for things that are different. A story with Black characters that’s going to appeal to a lot of people doesn’t need to take place on a plantation, doesn’t need to take place in the projects, doesn’t need to have drug dealers in it, doesn’t need to have gang members in it,” Jefferson said. “There’s an audience for different depictions of people’s lives, and there is a market for depictions of black life that are as broad and as deep as any other depictions of people’s lives.”

As he continued, “”It was important to me to reflect the diversity of the Black experience. We are just as nuanced and complex and diverse as any other group of people… I think it’s important to show diversity within diversity. I mean, it’s sort of like people assume that diversity means one thing, and you have one Black guy in a room and that gives you the totality of the Black experience. And to me, it’s important to recognize that no one Black person contains the totality of the Black experience.”

Writing (Original Screenplay): Anatomy of a Fall

Anatomy of a Fall (NEON)

Anatomy of a Fall writer/director Justine Triet said that the breakout star of her film — Messi, a very good dog who plays a key role in the mystery — was found after a long search that prioritized talent over aesthetics. “We decided to not really be focused on physical [beauty], but just on her capacity, you know. And Messi was really above every [other] dog.”

Triet also discussed awards season’s most insidious earworm: the Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band cover of 50 Cent’s “P.I.M.P.” “I’m 45. And when I was younger, I listened to lots to 50 Cent… We asked, first of all, [for] Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” and they refused to give us the rights. It’s really strange to start with Dolly Parton and to finish with 50 Cent, but in a way, yeah, I think it was the most passive-aggressive song for the husband [to play]. And I love very much this version. I had it in my computer since five years ago. My daughter was obsessed with this song, so it was a legend in my house.”

Cinematography: Hoyte van Hoytema, Oppenheimer

Oppenheimer (Universal)

When asked about the biggest challenges of shooting Oppenheimer, Hoyte van Hoytema told press about making sure “that a film that is very much made out of people talking in a room, a lot of close-ups” would be “a cinematic experience. A thing that people really could, you know, transcend into — into the reality of this story.”

Added van Hoytema, “One of the beautiful things with working with Chris Nolan is that he really tries to maintain a specific intimacy around the camera. He really loves the set to feel small and personal. And in this way, I always have the feeling that filming with him is like making a tiny, tiny little film on a very grand scale.”

Documentary Feature Film: 20 Days in Mariupol

20 Hours in Mariupol (PBS)

Mstyslav Chernov, during his acceptance speech, told the world that “This is the first Oscar in the Ukrainian history. And I’m honored. But probably I will be the first director on this stage who will say I wish I never made this film.”

In the interview room, the director of the powerful war documentary, covering Russia’s invasion of Ukraine from the ground, elaborated further on his feelings about his win: “Right now, unfortunately, Ukraine and the topic of support in Ukraine became a bargaining chip for a lot of politicians in the world, and we should just — and I hope I remind everyone with our film that this is a humanitarian catastrophe, and this is not a political question.”

In his speech, Chernov called upon the show’s attendees — “you, some of the most talented people in the world” — to help Ukraine. Asked backstage about the ways Hollywood can help them, he replied that “history is not always how it happened. It’s how we remember. And the future generations will look back at what was happening to us right now, and they will see through the lens of cinema, whether it’s documentary or scripted.”

Chernov also paid note to how all filmmakers have an impact: “Not only those filmmakers who make serious cinema about problems with the world — those who entertain. Because children, adults, civilians, everyone in Ukraine, when they are fighting, when they are hiding in basements, when bombs fall, they watch cinema. They escape in a different world, so they stay sane and they can survive through this horrifying event. So even lighthearted films help humanity to get through probably the hardest time in many, many years.”

Documentary Short Film: The Last Repair Shop

The Last Repair Shop (Searchlight Pictures)

Directors Kris Bowers and Ben Proudfoot told press that following their short film’s success, they were announcing the launch of a $15 million fundraisingcampaign to help support the Los Angeles Unified School District’s music program, as featured in The Last Repair Shop. “We made this film on our own dime for many years, four years. And to see the impact that it’s making on students’ lives at the end of the day is just incredible,” Proudfoot said.

And why does music education in the schools matter? Said Bowers, “that entire room out there and everybody that’s going on stage talks about how they went to art because of something that they were moving through in their personal life, and how much being an artist helped them process that. We all watch these films and we love it because it speaks to something that happened in our lives, and we’re so moved by that. So the arts are incredibly important — they’re this vehicle to communicate through these traumatic times. So, for children to have that feels so incredibly important, especially in times like now.”

Added Proudfoot, “Yeah. We hope young people will put down their phones and pick up a saxophone, violin, or a camera.”

Film Editing: Jennifer Lame, Oppenheimer

Oppenheimer (Universal)

Jennifer Lame, as an editor, told press about the struggle of keeping Oppenheimer moving fast, because “all the performances were incredible. Everything that Chris shot, his script was incredible, and I wanted it all to be in there, and I wanted everyone to enjoy it as much as I did when I read that script, but I didn’t want it to feel too rushed… It means so much to me that so many people enjoyed the film and came out to watch it and told me they didn’t think it’s too long, even though I know it’s almost three hours.”

To hit even that runtime, sacrifices had to be made, including a lot of footage of Murphy. “Some of my favorite scenes are when he’s vulnerable, like in Truman’s office when he actually wants to take a stand and he’s bumbling and he’s acting like he can’t make a sentence, which you’ve never seen him do before. I had a way longer cut of that scene,” she said. “Or when he’s in the Casey Affleck scene and he’s really bad at lying. There was so many of my favorite scenes with Cillian that I did have to cut down.”

Visual Effects: Godzilla Minus One

Godzilla Minus One (Toho Studios)

The visual effects team behind Godzilla Minus One had the best shoes at the ceremony, which you could see as director/visual effects supervisor Takashi Yamazaki spoke to press. “I do believe that perhaps the success of Godzilla Minus One will open up a new opportunity for a lot of Japanese filmmakers,” he said through an interpreter. “I think it’s important because Japan is such a small country that we need international box office and revenue to be able to sustain the industry. So this should be the start of something — something bigger I hope for the industry as a whole.”

Godzilla Minus One isn’t just set in post-World War II Japan, but the character of Godzilla has long had a connection to anxiety over the atomic bomb. Asked about the connection between his film and the eventual Best Picture winner, Yamazaki said that “of course the relationship or the juxtaposition was not intentional. I think as we were making the film, the state of the world, the geopolitical scene has changed quite a bit and it almost feels fated that both of these films were released in the same year.”

Added Yamazaki, “And as a person of Japanese ancestry and descent, I think perhaps that my response to Oppenheimer — I would like to dedicate a different film to that when that day comes.”

For more of Consequence’s Oscar coverage, check out the full winners list as well as the 10 funniest moments of the ceremony.

Oscars 2024 Behind the Scenes: The Best Things Winners Said After Winning
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