After getting played off the stage abruptyly following their win in the Best Original Song category for “Golden,” the team behind KPop Demon Hunters got the opportunity to finish their acceptance speeches backstage and fans could not be happier.
In case you missed it, during the 98th Academy Awards on Monday, Ejae and Mark Sonnenblick took the stage with their fellow producers on Golden, only for the Oscars to give them the boot after one short message from Ejae, who co-wrote the song and serves as the singing voice of Rumi in the hit film. Outrage quickly took over social media with fans decrying the Academy for taking away the moment in favor of more silly bits and jokes from the show’s host, Conan O Brien.
Thankfully, however, after walking backstage to talk with reporters about their historic win, the team behind the chart-topping song were asked to react to getting played off and to finish their thanks, which fans immediately heralded online.
“Good, I’m glad they got to finish their thank yous. That was a gross decision from the Oscars,” one fan on Reddit wrote under video from the winners interview room.
“Glad they addressed the cutoff! They should’ve had more time,” a fan wrote on YouTube.
“Thank the heavens they finished their speech here. The cutoff was the singular bad thing about an otherwise ecstatic, historic and extremely joyful win,” another wrote.
While KPop Demon Hunters had already won the award for Best Animated Feature Film by the time that Best Original Song came around towards the end of the night, many at home were excited to see Ejae and crew accept the award after having heard their song countless times over the past year or so since the film released.
Since premiering on Netflix in 2025, the movie has become the most watched film on the platform while Golden has remained on the charts similarly alongside other songs from the movie.
For that reason, fans were waiting impatiently to see what the songwriting and producing team had to say about the win — which becomes the first KPop song to ever win an Oscar — only for the Oscars to dramatically turn up the music and zoom out to cut away. It was a shocking moment that made some at home question what they were seeing.
While the Academy has been known in the past to play off winners who have not gotten through their speeches or let other members of the team onstage speak, the loud and sudden playing of the music and the cut away took many by surprise to say the least.
“Starting the orchestra full blast instead of slowly playing them off was pretty nasty work,” one person commented on social media.
In the end, the entire group got the chance to share their thanks and finish their speeches backstage, with Ejae giving love to Audrey Nuna and Rei Ami, who lend their singing voices to Mira and Zoey for the movie. “I needed to thank them on stage and I didn’t get to ’cause they just cut us off but I wanted to thank Rei Ami and Audrey Nuna, they killed it with their singing and they’re just incredible people. I love them so much.”
Meanwhile, Yu Han Lee used the opportunity to thank their families, saying, “this is an incredible honor,” as Sonnenblick shouted out his own husband, family, and the fans.
“Everybody who worked on this movie, all the animators, it was a real collaboration across the board. It’s a movie where part of the movie is about looking at someone you’ve been taught to hate and to fear and starting to trust, maybe even love them, and that’s part of what the movie is about,” said Sonneblick. “It’s not ‘I’m going up, up, up,’ it’s ‘we’re going up, up, up,’ and that’s part of the reason we’re on stage right now.”
This story originally appeared on Decider and is republished here with permission.