Oscars live coverage: Timothée Chalamet is the butt of every joke

The 2026 Academy Awards has a number of Jewish films in contention. Photo by Getty Images

By Mira Fox, Talya Zax, PJ Grisar and Olivia HaynieMarch 15, 2026

At last year’s Academy Awards, Anora — a frenetic, somewhat ambiguously Jewish look at a Jewish enclave of New York, took home best picture, original screenplay, director and actress for its Jewish lead Mikey Madison. This year, we have a film that feels, in some ways, quite parallel, while cranking the Yiddishkeit to 11: Josh Safdie’s breathless picaresque Marty Supreme, set on the Lower East Side, is up for best picture and its star, Timothée Chalamet is a favorite for best actor.

There’s also Blue Moon, Richard Linklater’s portrait of Jewish lyricist Lorenz Hart’s breakup with composer Richard Rodgers (Ethan Hawke is up for best actor). And One Battle After Another, a campy and absurdist satire about the infiltration of white supremacists in the U.S. government, is poised to have a massive night, with the blockbuster Sinners serving as its main competition.

That all goes to say that it’s another great year for Jewish stories at the Oscars, with some really compelling fodder for discussion about the place that Jews occupy today in arts and media. What stories are we telling and how are they received?

Here, as ever, the Forward culture team is here to break it all down for you, live as it unfolds. Of course, we cover Jewish movies all year. But at the Academy Awards, we get to see how the rest of the world feels about these movies. We will be updating this story with our thoughts throughout the ceremony.

Mira: Traditionally, to start the night, we all say what we’re wearing and eating. I did a bunch of cooking for the week so I have vegetarian avgolemono soup and Alison Roman’s fennel salad. (I’m obsessed with this salad.) I am proudly wearing hard pants.

Olivia: brown sweater and jeans; no food but aggressively chewing mint gum. I will later be drinking some of the seltzer I got from Brooklyn’s Seltzer Fest today.

PJ: I am reheating some chicken from last night. Wearing a blue sweater with a little toggle and jeans. How many of Stellan Skarsgård’s large adult sons are here? In other l’dor v’dor news, Bill Pullman just mentioned how they filmed the Spaceballs sequel with his son Lewis.

Talya: I believe I’m wearing the exact same sweater I donned for this event last year — where’s my award for consistency? And, as always, sweatpants; I cannot comprehend suffering through this event in jeans.

Discussion of Israeli-Palestinian protests on the red carpet

Mira: Love a toggle. Speaking of outfits, anyone have thoughts on Odessa A’zion’s spangled red carpet set? She is one of the only people who styles herself on the red carpet, which I do respect.

Olivia: A’Zion’s outfit kind of looks like she forgot to tie whatever was supposed to be holding it up. I don’t think it looks bad, just like it’s falling down.

PJ: It wouldn’t look out of place hanging from the window of a VW van with shag carpet and some Tibetan prayer flags.

Mira: Of note, the past several years have seen protesters approaching people on their way into the ceremony, and a lot of pins on the red carpet taking a stance on the Israel-Hamas war, largely pro-Palestinian ones. We’re seeing less of that this year — though not none. Javier Bardem posted a photo of him wearing a pin reading “no to the war” in Spanish, along with another pin featuring Handala, a cartoon boy considered a symbol of Palestinians. The team of The Voice of Hind Rajab, nominated for best foreign film, are also wearing red pins with a white dove.

PJ: Those have replaced the red hand ArtistsforCeasefire pins, which some said recalled the bloody palms of Palestinians who killed IDF soldiers in 2000.

Olivia: A reporter for ABC in a pre-recorded segment asked executive producers and showrunners for the ceremony Raj Kapoor and Katy Mullan if anything would get bleeped, such as mentions of Trump, Israel and Palestine. Recently, the BBC removed director Akinola Davies Jr’s call for a “Free Palestine” from their BAFTA stream. Kapoor asserted that the night’s production team supports free speech, but we’ll see what transpires over the course of the night.

Digs at Timothée Chalamet to start the night

Mira: Good dig at Timothée Chalamet’s recent ballet/opera comments from host Conan O’Brien. He was good-natured; jazz, he said, was jealous to be left out. O’Brien also got a dig in at Ted Sarandos, the head of Netflix, joking it was his first ever time in a theater — a timely joke about the threats posed to Hollywood and, really, all media by the giant mergers threatening to create a monopoly combining major players such as CBS, CNN and Warner Brothers under Paramount-Skydance. They say Jews run the media, but really, it’s the corporations.

PJ: Conan also paid tribute to the polyglot, international efforts of filmmaking. A bit like the Tower of Babel — but a good thing. I’m thrilled for best supporting actress winner Amy Madigan, but her best Oscar moment will always be icing out Elia Kazan when he won his lifetime achievement award.

Olivia: A brief break from Timmy jokes to give out the award for best animated short. Although not necessarily a Jewish film, winner The Girl Who Cried Pearls features a kind Jewish merchant reciting a piece of religious folklore that Eve’s tears turned into pearls. The hyper-realistic stop-animation style was well-deserving of the award — and its rags-to-riches story does have a bit of a Jewish-immigrant’s American dream vibe to it.

Mira: We just saw a clip of Marty Supreme, in which Chalamet wears a slimy thin mustache. It fits the character, but the camera panned over to the real-time Chalamet who has for some reason continued to wear it, along with a patchy goatee. This facial hair choice does not make one want to root for him in the very unpredictable best picture race.

PJ: There go my hopes for him playing Menachem Schneerson — if he can’t grow the beard organically, I’ll never believe the performance.

Olivia: The Marty Supreme teaser was followed by O’Brien paying credit to the Oscars’ live orchestra — maybe pointed timing, giving Chalamet’s recent comments about classical art forms. Then the director did a drumroll on a silicone butt with ping-pong paddles, recalling the scene in the film.

Big sweeties, a best supporting actor and a snub for the Israeli-Palestinian short film

Talya: I’d like to propose a new category: biggest sweetie at the ceremony. Wagner Moura’s presentation as part of the inaugural best casting category has won my vote!

Mira: For me, Jacob Elordi should win for the thrilled hugs he gave his makeup team from Frankenstein. One must imagine they bonded really deeply during what they said were the 400 (!) hours he spent in that chair getting turned into the monster.

PJ: Kumail Nanjiani just suggested abridged versions of classic films, including Schindler’s Post-it, which obviously reminds me of that controversial Robert Kraft-funded Super Bowl ad.

Talya: Best live action short film is quite a political category this year, as Olivia wrote — one of the nominees, Butcher’s Stain, engaged really deeply with the Israel-Hamas war.

Mira: And we have a tie! Which no one, including the team behind The Singers, who won the first award, knew could happen. But the Two Strangers Exchanging Saliva team said this has happened three times before. I wonder if they Googled that during The Singers‘ acceptance speech.

PJ: I haven’t seen The Singers, but I’m pretty sure I went to temple with them.

Talya: The war film didn’t win — which is a good reminder that so far this ceremony has been markedly apolitical. Not surprising for the Academy, but sorta surprising in a year like this one. But the makers of Two Strangers Exchanging Saliva are doing their best to change things,

shouting out how many people of international backgrounds helped make the film. And, also, making fun of Chalamet for those comments about opera and ballet

Mira: I was sure Butcher’s Stain would be one of the winners, and the tie would demonstrate the split within the arts between those who feel that good art is political, and those who feel that good art should float above. Perhaps it also simply didn’t deserve the win — I didn’t see all of the nominees, so I can’t say for sure — but there may be some fatigue about the Israel-Hamas war in the voting body.

PJ: Best supporting actor winner Sean Penn missing this — presumably to meet a drug lord or rescue a businessman from a South American prison — is insanely on brand.

Robert Reiner, Diane Keaton get bittersweet remembrances

Talya: O’Brien delivers a fake Casablanca clip making fun of studios’ tendency to demand that movies awkwardly reiterate essential information. It also manages to point to an awkward truth: People increasingly don’t really remember much about World War II or the Holocaust! Sterling K. Brown asking for clarification that World War II was “the Hitler one, right?” was painful — and also a little funny.

PJ: It is my hope that the upcoming movie about the man who forecasted the weather on D-Day spurs a renaissance of interest in the war from all those Gen Z meteorology heads. Moving into the commemoration segment, the tribute to Rob Reiner from Billy Crystal is gutting, but also a very good capsule filmography that emphasizes just how many classics he produced — all in about a decade.

Talya: It’s also delivered with a smile, and earns a deserved number of laughs, which feels right for Reiner’s legacy.

PJ: Importantly, this is also a tribute to Michele Reiner, and their work for marriage equality. I cried when all of his collaborators came out. What a loss.

Talya: Playwright Tom Stoppard — something of a legendary script doctor for Hollywood and writer of Shakespeare in Love — earns a spot in the rest of the memorial segment. So does documentarian Frederick Wiseman and songwriter Alan Bergman.

Olivia: They also paid tribute to Udo Kier, whose last role was as a Jewish Holocaust survivor pretending to be a Nazi fugitive hiding in Brazil in the film The Secret Agent. That movie is up for best picture and best international feature tonight.

Mira: We’re also getting a lengthy tribute to Diane Keaton from Rachel McAdams. Woody Allen’s issues aside, I will always see Keaton in my mind’s eye in Annie Hall, in which she could not have been more perfect. She will forever be a foundational part of American Jewish culture thanks to that film — even though, of course, she very specifically was not Jewish, in real life or in the film.

Talya: Barbra Streisand arriving to pay tribute to Robert Redford has me tearing up before she even starts talking. Their pairing in The Way We Were is one of the most magnetic in film history, and the film itself is an essential exploration of tensions around Jewish politics and assimilation in the U.S.

PJ: Streisand made a point that the McCarthyism in the film — including loyalty oaths — has some troubling echoes today.

Mira: Babs — as she said Redford called her despite her protestations — said the actors bonded over their love of Modigliani, a favorite artist of mine as well. I don’t recall ever the in memoriam section ever feeling like quite as much of a gut punch. Maybe I’m just getting older and remembering these actors better, but what awful losses we had this year.