![\"Adrien](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/7E4KQWBNVBM3IBVDYKM62NH2BE.jpg\")
Adrien Brody attends the 98th Academy Awards. Photograph: Arturo Holmes\/Getty Images <\/p>\nFirst up tonight, it\u2019s the Oscar for actress in a supporting role, presented by Zoe Saldana.<\/p>\n
Will it be Elle Fanning or Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas for Sentimental Value, Amy Madigan for Weapons, Wunmi Mosaku for Sinners or Teyana Taylor for One Battle After Another?<\/p>\n
The Oscar goes to\u2026 Amy Madigan for Weapons.<\/p>\n
In what was thought to be a three-way battle with Mosaku and Taylor, Madigan has emerged the victor for her role as Aunt Gladys in Zach Cregger\u2019s horror film Weapons. Gladys is red-lipped, prone to maniacal laughter and just generally terrifying.<\/p>\n
Madigan\u2019s win \u2013 which arrives 40 years after her first Oscar nomination for Twice in a Lifetime \u2013 is probably recognition for her decade-spanning career more than anything else. But it also marks a rare acting win for a performance in a horror film.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is great,\u201d she says, calling it a \u201cdream part\u201d. It\u2019s more of a nightmare to watch, however. She thanks her \u201cbeloved\u201d husband, Ed Harris.<\/p>\n
Conan says he is honoured to be the last human host of the Oscars. \u201cLast year when I hosted, Los Angeles was on fire. But this year everything is going great,\u201d he ventures.<\/p>\n
Security is tight at the Dolby Theatre, he says, because of concerns about attacks from the opera and ballet community. (An early Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet joke, not unexpected.)<\/p>\n
In Hamnet, Agnes gives birth by herself in the woods, he notes. \u201cOr, as we call that in America, affordable healthcare.\u201d<\/p>\n
The monologue will continue until morale improves.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s 4pm local time \u2013 not local to me, I\u2019m in Finglas \u2013 and bewigged host Conan O\u2019Brien is about to run screaming onto the stage at the Dolby Theatre, pursued by children. (This skit will mean nothing to anyone who hasn\u2019t seen horror film Weapons.)<\/p>\n
Who will be overwhelmed by tears? Who will acknowledge the miserable state of the world? Who will be forced to squint in despair at the autocue? Whose speech will be cruelly cut off? <\/p>\n
Whose happy-loser face will betray their inevitable disappointment? And who will win viewers\u2019 hearts along with their gold statuette?<\/p>\n
Popcorn and therapists on standby, we\u2019re about to find out.<\/p>\n
There is potential Oscar history to be made all over the place tonight, but let\u2019s hope the one record that stays intact is the one for longest acceptance speech.<\/p>\n
Adrien Brody, best actor winner for The Brutalist, smashed it only last year when his speech went on for five minutes and 40 seconds. It felt longer.<\/p>\n
Adrien Brody attends the 98th Academy Awards. Photograph: Arturo Holmes\/Getty Images <\/p>\n
He beat the previous record holder, Greer Garson \u2013 who won best actress for Mrs Miniver way back at the 15th Academy Awards in 1942 \u2013 by a whole 10 seconds.<\/p>\n
Wait, but aren\u2019t all these awards shindigs a bit silly? How can one piece of art be judged against another piece of art? <\/p>\n
It will all seem more logical if we remember that the point of any awards ceremony, whether it\u2019s the Sausage Roll Awards or the Oscars, is to market the industry in question as a whole. Never mind who was robbed or who \u201cdeserved\u201d it most, the ultimate job tonight is to make everything seem not just glamorous and praiseworthy, but also magical and awe-inspiring in some ineffable way.<\/p>\n
Over to Norwegian actor Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, nominated in the supporting actress category for her beautiful performance in Sentimental Value<\/a>. She told Variety that while she\u2019s grateful for the first-time recognition, she likes to keep things in perspective.<\/p>\n \u201cMy value as a person is not reliant on me being nominated or anything or being snubbed,\u201d she said. (She also said the word snub was \u201cinsane\u201d).<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s such a constructed reality. It\u2019s not a real competition. We made something months ago, and now we\u2019re putting it in a pot, and somebody\u2019s going to choose one.\u201d<\/p>\n This all sounds very reasonable and mature.<\/p>\n Woman-of-the-moment Jessie Buckley has arrived at the Dolby Theatre for what should be a very big night for her \u2013 though she might have to wait until after 2am for her category to come up in the running order.<\/p>\n She looks as relaxed as it is presumably possible to be in this situation and is wearing a Very Nice Dress*.<\/p>\n Buckley is on track to become Ireland\u2019s first ever winner of the Oscar for actress in a leading role. (Brenda Fricker won the best supporting actress gong in 1990 for My Left Foot.)<\/p>\n *Not a fashion expert. But the internet tells me this red-pink extravaganza is Chanel.<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t get a good joke for Train Dreams,\u201d Conan O\u2019Brien, our host tonight, told predecessor Jimmy Kimmel earlier this week. \u201cIt\u2019s a beautiful movie, but no joke sticks to it.\u201d<\/p>\n Judging by the big grin on his face here, he\u2019s got plenty of others in his tux pocket.<\/p>\n The inclusion of Hamnet\u2019s Chlo\u00e9 Zhao stopped the director category from becoming a clean sweep for men this year, but there are some who argue that she shouldn\u2019t have been the only woman director to make the cut.<\/p>\n \u201cSo many of the best films I saw this year were made by women,\u201d said actor Natalie Portman in an interview at the Sundance festival in January. \u201cYou just see the barriers at every level because so many were not recognised at awards time.\u201d<\/p>\n The \u201cextraordinary\u201d films Portman said were \u201cnot getting the accolades they deserve\u201d were Sorry, Baby<\/a> (written and directed by Eva Victor, its non-binary-identifying star), Shih-Ching Tsou\u2019s Left-Handed Girl, Nia DaCosta\u2019s Hedda and Mona Fastvold\u2019s The Testament of Ann Lee<\/a>, all of which were completely shut out of the Oscar nominations.<\/p>\n To this list I would add the aforementioned If I Had Legs I\u2019d Kick You<\/a>, written and directed by Mary Bronstein, which picked up just a single nomination for best actress.<\/p>\n Incidentally, we might see our first ever female cinematographer winner if Autumn Durald Arkapaw takes the prize for Sinners.<\/p>\n Awards presenters tonight include last year\u2019s acting winners Adrien Brody, Mikey Madison, Kieran Culkin and Zoe Saldana.<\/p>\n We will also see the traditional smattering of people who could conceivably have been nominated for films that got a best picture nod, among them Chase Infiniti from One Battle After Another, Gwyneth Paltrow from Marty Supreme and Will Shakespeare himself, Paul Mescal<\/a>.<\/p>\n The brilliant Rose Byrne, who was thought to be Jessie Buckley\u2019s biggest rival for best actress before (seemingly!) drifting out of contention, has arrived on the red carpet.<\/p>\n The Australian star of If I Had Legs I\u2019d Kick You \u2013 in which she puts in a searing, breathless performance as an overwhelmed mother \u2013 is expected to take part in a mid-ceremony Bridesmaids reunion, specially timed just for when everybody had finally forgotten about Bridesmaids.<\/p>\n Here are some things to expect from tonight\u2019s show, which we must \u2013 at least until YouTube takes over the rights from 2029 \u2013 refer to as the Oscars telecast.<\/p>\n Our host is \u201c100 per cent Irish\u201d Conan O\u2019Brien<\/a>, who survived the 2025 ceremony intact enough to be hired for a second consecutive year and has been out workshopping his script in comedy clubs. Yes, we can disown him if he bombs.<\/p>\n In a valiant bid to keep the running time down \u2013 or, alternatively, in a stunning act of Nick Cave erasure \u2013 only two of the five original song nominees will be performed: I Lied to You from Sinners and the irrepressible Golden from KPop Demon Hunters.<\/p>\n The producers have, however, sensibly decided to run an extended In Memoriam segment to pay tribute to recently departed stars, including Robert Redford, Diane Keaton, Robert Duvall, Catherine O\u2019Hara, Terence Stamp, Brigitte Bardot and actor-director Rob Reiner.<\/p>\n Happily, we will see clips of the acting nominees emoting their best in the films they\u2019re in, not those cringe-inducing praise-fests from an assembly of random A-listers (a recent Oscars telecast horror known as the \u201cFab Five\u201d).<\/p>\n A total of 10 nominations involve Irish productions or talent. <\/p>\n Alongside the ones we mentioned earlier, Maggie O\u2019Farrell<\/a> is nominated for adapted screenplay for Hamnet (together with its director, Chlo\u00e9 Zhao). She\u2019s an early arrival at the Dolby Theatre tonight.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Blue Moon \u2013 filmed at Ardmore Studios with Irish production company Wild Atlantic Pictures on board \u2013 received two nominations (Ethan Hawke for best actor and Robert Kaplow for best original screenplay).<\/p>\n Representatives of Screen Ireland, the State\u2019s development agency for the film industry, were in Los Angeles this week on a trade mission to promote Ireland as a location for co-production, discussing \u201copportunities for increased collaboration\u201d at meetings with Netflix, Sony, Amazon MGM and Paramount, among others.<\/p>\n Sometimes, as Conor Capplis explains in his feature on Ireland doubling for overseas locations<\/a>, this can involve making the Gaiety Theatre look like Broadway \u2013 no mean feat \u2013 or transforming a dingy Dublin alley into, well, a dingy New York alley.<\/p>\n It has been a long journey from Hamnet publicity duties to campaign trail madness for Jessie Buckley, who has also been out promoting new film The Bride! of late. I wouldn\u2019t blame her if she wanted to lie down in a dark room after this.<\/p>\n Her status as clear favourite for best actress springs not only from her compelling performance as Agnes Hathaway in Hamnet \u2013 I think the technical term is \u201cbarnstorming\u201d \u2013 but also from her clean sweep of all the main precursor awards to the Oscars. She won at Critics\u2019 Choice, Bafta, Screen Actors Guild (now the Actors) and the Golden Globes.<\/p>\n This hasn\u2019t been achieved in her category since Ren\u00e9e Zellweger in 2020 for the biopic Judy (a film Buckley coincidentally co-starred in), and Zellweger did indeed go on to win the Academy Award. It will be the Oscars shock of the century if Buckley doesn\u2019t do the same.<\/p>\n She has recently spoken about how her love of music and theatre helped her cope<\/a> with an eating disorder and depression as a teenager.<\/p>\n \u201cYou know, you can\u2019t walk through life not being affected, but you can transform that into something that allows you to be more human and alive in the way that you want to be,\u201d she told BBC Radio 4\u2019s Desert Island Discs.<\/p>\n In her native Killarney, there is much pride on display, as Anne Lucey reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n Patrick who? St Patrick, you say? What\u2019s he in again?<\/p>\n It\u2019s the Oscars<\/a>! The 98th Academy Awards will soon be shimmering onto screen live from sunny Hollywood, where the temperature is 29 degrees and many big names will shortly be sweating on the red carpet \u2013 if only because Ireland\u2019s Jessie Buckley<\/a> is one of the few clear favourites to win.<\/p>\n Killarney\u2019s finest is poised to become the first ever Irish winner of actress in a leading role and will \u2013 \u201cbarring Los Angeles sliding into the sea\u201d, as our chief film correspondent, Donald Clarke, puts it \u2013 collect her Oscar for Hamnet<\/a>.<\/p>\n But the other key awards are either wide open or ajar just enough to promise an unusually decent ratio of surprises to inevitabilities in a ceremony that begins on RT\u00c9 One at the almost-civilised hour of 11pm.<\/p>\n The local start time of 4pm means no vampires will be braving the Dolby Theatre, though vampire-horror Sinners<\/a> does arrive with a record-smashing 16 nominations. Has Ryan Coogler\u2019s film enough momentum to translate those nods into a mantelpiece of statuettes?<\/p>\n Or will it be one bauble after another for Paul Thomas Anderson\u2019s One Battle After Another<\/a>, the narrow frontrunner for best picture?<\/p>\n Is Buckley\u2019s biggest rival for the title \u201cmost unstoppable force on the night\u201d the trio of Rumi, Mira and Zoey, better known as the KPop Demon Hunters? Or is it, perhaps, Dubliner Richard Baneham, a two-time winner for his visual effects work on the Avatar films, who is in line to win his third Oscar tonight for Avatar: Fire and Ash?<\/p>\n With Bugonia \u2013 produced by Dublin-based Element Pictures<\/a> \u2013 picking up a quartet of nominations, and John Kelly and Andrew Freedman<\/a> in the running for best animated short for Retirement Plan, the green wave is back in town and vying to make history once again.<\/p>\n So, welcome to the Unpredictable Oscars. Fasten your seatbelts, it\u2019s going to be a bumpy night (except for Jessie).<\/p>\n One link after another<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"First up tonight, it\u2019s the Oscar for actress in a supporting role, presented by Zoe Saldana. 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Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, nominated for Sentimental Value, attends the Oscars. Photograph: Mike Coppola\/Getty Images <\/p>\n![\"Jessie](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/UXSG3QIS3XVLGGSUPV6RUOT4UM.jpg\")
Jessie Buckley attends the Oscars at the Dolby Theatre. Photograph: Mike Coppola\/Getty Images <\/p>\n![\"Oscars](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/MQTZG52ZVQVPDPS6MI5FHUPZ34.jpg\")
Oscars host Conan O’Brien (right) with his wife, Liza Powel O’Brien, at the Dolby Theatre. Photograph: Julian Hamilton\/Getty Images <\/p>\n![\"One](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/K3Z3HT4P73FMZAM47QOIR5LIXU.jpg\")
One Battle After Another star Chase Infiniti attends the 98th Oscars in Hollywood. Photograph: Julian Hamilton\/Getty Images <\/p>\n![\"Australian](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/FUA2W72XVQGABVPBRLK2BQAOGY.jpg\")
Australian actor Rose Byrne attends the 98th Annual Academy Awards at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. Photograph: Angela Weiss\/AFP via Getty Images <\/p>\n![\"Hamnet](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Y2AYJNT2N5XBFSGGXEAVOL6TXY.jpg\")
Hamnet author Maggie O’Farrell attends the 98th Annual Academy Awards at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. Photograph: Angela Weiss\/AFP via Getty Images <\/p>\n![\"Signs](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/3W2OXNTMXPYDK3J3T347K5JIWQ.jpg\")
Signs wishing Jessie Buckley luck adorn her home town of Killarney town ahead of Oscars night on Sunday. Photograph: Lina Jevdet\/PA Wire <\/p>\n