Could Hollywood’s biggest night wind up exposing some of the film industry’s biggest stars as … gasp … anti-vaxxers? has confirmed that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences doesn’t plan to mandate proof of COVID-19 vaccination in order to attend this year’s Oscars ceremony, leading to speculation about some of this year’s presenters and/or nominees remaining unvaccinated.
Rather than mandating proof of vaccination, the Academy will reportedly require a negative PCR test within 48 hours of the 2022 Oscars, which will be held at Los Angeles’ Dolby Theatre on March 27. Masking protocols have reportedly not been set just yet. These rules and regulations are a far cry from last year’s Academy Awards, which adhered to strict COVID-19 testing and masking policies for attendees.
So why the change of heart with this year’s Oscars? In typical Hollywood fashion, it’s all about power dynamics. THR‘s story contained this juicy aside:
“Some industry insiders have speculated that the Academy is being less stringent than it could be because more than a few high-profile industry figures — including at least one of last year’s acting winners and prominent members of the casts of multiple Best Picture nominees, as well as nominees in other categories — would otherwise be precluded from attending the Oscars.”
Verrrrry interesting! Verrrrrry interesting, indeed! While it would take literally forever to try and unmask which “prominent members of the casts of multiple Best Picture nominees” don’t have Moderna, Pfizer, or Johnson & Johnson-provided antibodies coursing through their bloodstreams, this part of the sentence is a bit easier to play amateur sleuth with: “…at least one of last year’s acting winners.”
For context: It’s tradition for the previous year’s acting nominees to present the following year. The Best Actor winner from the prior year typically presents Best Actress and vice-versa; the Best Supporting Actress winner from the previous year typically presents Best Supporting Actor and vice-versa.
Last year at the 2021 Oscars, Frances McDormand won Best Actress for Nomadland; Anthony Hopkins won Best Actor for The Father; Youn Yuh-jung won Best Supporting Actress for Minari; and Daniel Kaluuya won Best Supporting Actor for Judas and the Black Messiah. So, according to THR‘s “industry insider” sources, one OR MORE of these Oscar winners is ALLEGEDLY not vaccinated. So who is it?
Well, it’s not Anthony Hopkins! There’s video of the “Hannibal Lecter actor” (thanks for the helpful descriptive text, NBC News!) getting his COVID vaccine back in January 2021. (Besides, Anthony Hopkins did not even bother to attend last year’s Academy Awards celebration, despite already being vaxxed. He didn’t even dial-in on Zoom! He simply woke up the next morning and recorded a short video as his acceptance speech. Real king shit!)
And guess what? It’s not Youn Yuh-jung, either! She also got vaxxed last year, video of which got surfaced on Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s Facebook page.
So, that leaves McDormand and Kaluuya as THR‘s POTENTIAL culprits. We at Decider have NO IDEA whether or not either one of them got the jab; a cursory Google search didn’t turn up anything showing that they did, but full disclosure, we also didn’t actually bother to look past the first page of Google results. (If either one of them DID get vaxxed and they want the world to know about it, they need to work on their SEO skills!)
Viewers will just have to wait and see if and how this alleged vaccine drama affects this year’s Academy Awards, given that the US is currently averaging nearly 300,000 daily COVID cases thanks to the highly contagious omicron variant. Jimmy Kimmel recently lamented superheroes getting “shut out” at the Oscars, but if the Academy isn’t careful, the upcoming ceremony could certainly feature a superspreader.
This content was originally published here.