The last minutes of the 2021 Oscars event left lots of audiences puzzled and even upset.
Breaking with custom, the Best Picture classification was revealed as the third-to-last reward of the night on Sunday, April 25, regardless of having actually existed as the last award for several years running. This led some audiences and experts to hypothesize that the event’s manufacturers were deliberately conserving Best Actor as the last classification, with the presumption that Chadwick Boseman would get a posthumous win for his function in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.
However, that’s not how the program winding up playing out. After Nomadland was crowned Best Picture and Frances McDormand won Best Actress for her function as Fern in the exact same movie, some audiences were stunned when Anthony Hopkins was called Best Actor for his function in The Father. Because Hopkins was not in presence, speaker Joaquin Phoenix suddenly ended the event right there.
“anthony was phenomenal,” one Twitter user posted. “good for him truly. but how are you gonna 1) speed the absolute f–k out of the in memoriam segment and 2) switch up the order of the awards to make your audience think you’re gonna give chadwick some sort of tribute and then just……. not. feels cruel.”
