WITH KELLY AND RYAN
Live With Kelly and Ryan hosts Kelly Ripa and Ryan Seacrest take us behind the scenes of their Oscars shows.
Roughly three hours before start time of the 91st Academy Awards ceremony, Ryan Seacrest will take his usual perch on the E! Live From the Red Carpet platform and talk to jittery celebrities. “He does it so seamlessly that it’s phenomenal,” Kelly Ripa raves.
During the ceremony, Ripa will stand off to the side of the stage and get immediate reactions from presenters and winners. “She’s literally waiting in the wings for them,” Seacrest says.
Then, at 6 a.m., mere hours after the final award is presented, Ripa, 48, and Seacrest, 43, are back at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood welcoming the Oscars’ biggest and, ahem, most caffeinated winners for the syndicated Live show’s popular annual after-Oscars special. Many of the stars who were just there only hours before swing back by to chat after a night of celebrating.
“For me, the Oscars seemed like a place in a faraway fantasy land,” says Seacrest, who grew up in Atlanta loving movies like Arthur, Star Wars and anything with Michael Douglas in it. “As a kid, I saw these people from the movies go up to the stage and be honored for what they did. I wanted to come to L.A. just to see where they shoot these movies.”
Ripa, who grew up in Stratford, N.J., loving drive-in movies, agrees. “It never dawned on me that I’d be on that same stage talking to people in the movies. It’s very emotional when we walk out and look at each other and think, Oh, my gosh, we are doing this!”
When you’re around big-name celebs as much as
this pair is, it’s no wonder there are some tales to tell. Ripa still isn’t over the time Jack Nicholson, a three-time winner, dropped by backstage unannounced and worked his magic. “He’s every bit a movie star you’d imagine.” And Tom Cruise, she says, “makes you feel like you’re the only person who’s ever asked a question ever!”
As for Seacrest: “I still get nervous when I hear in my ear that Meryl Streep has arrived—like ‘Ahhh, she’s coming!’” he says.
Turns out the stars may have a case of the nerves too. “Most don’t even remember [later] that we spoke,” Ripa says. “I’ll see
them at parties and tell them they were great backstage and they say, ‘What? Did you see me?’ They’re not really in their bodies.”
Some are also crushed that they forgot to thank everyone in their acceptance speeches. “I always make sure we work in their thankyous on the show,” Ripa says. Anne Hathaway, who nabbed a trophy for Les Misérables in 2013, asked if she could express her gratitude to her agent.
But Ripa refuses to divulge which VIP provided one of the most memorable backstage moments of all. Let’s just say it was a wardrobe malfunction that involved a high-slit dress.