Oscars Host Conan O’Brien Reveals “Bad” Joke He’s Already Cut Shading This Nominee
Conan O’Brien might be having nightmares about this 2026 Oscars nominee.
Ahead of his hosting duties at the March 15 ceremony, the former late night host confessed that he and his team had plenty of “bad” jokes, especially as they had a hard time coming up with a quip about Best Picture nominee Train Dreams and, after writing thousands of jokes, cut all of them.
“This is the best Train Dreams joke out of 5,000,” Conan shared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! March 11. “Train Dreams was nominated for Best Picture. Finally, a movie that proves being a Pacific Northwest lumberjack in the early 1900s wasn’t as fun as it sounds.”
The response from the audience was tepid—with only a handful having confirmed they’d even seen the film starring Joel Edgerton about a logger and railroad worker in the early 20th century.
“No! No! No! No! Pity applause doesn’t work,” Conan yelled to the crowd. “You waited, you were sad, as I was. That’s why you’re not gonna see this joke.”
“There are times where there are certain areas we cannot crack,” Conan had explained to host Jimmy Kimmel earlier in the interview. “One of them is the movie Train Dreams. Can’t get a good joke for Train Dreams, which means there is no good joke for Train Dreams.”
The 62-year-old added, “And these are very good writers, so I blame Train Dreams. It’s a beautiful movie, but no joke sticks to it.”
Paul Morigi/Getty Images
Still, Conan has been trying every piece of material he can ahead of his second time hosting the Oscars, even testing out his jokes out in front of live audiences by making surprise appearances at comedy clubs throughout Los Angeles.
“I get obsessive,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview published March 9. “I want to turn it off, but I can’t. That’s not always a fun ride, but that’s the deal. At 62, I understand it.”
Disney/Mark Seliger
And despite the stress of hosting Hollywood’s biggest night, the chance to do so was one Conan could not turn down—although he had a very interesting reason as to why.
“There’s a little bearded Viking inside me,” he said. “He’s been there since I was 10 years old. And when that Viking decides on something—whether it’s replacing David Letterman with no experience, skiing some advanced slope I have no business going down or hosting the Oscars, that’s what’s going to happen.”
For a look at all the first-time Oscar nominees who might get the Conan treatment at the 2026 Academy Awards, keep reading.
Warner Bros. Pictures
Michael B. Jordan, Sinners
Jordan’s tour de force performance as the ambitious Smokestack twins in Ryan Coogler‘s Sinners—his fifth collaboration with the filmmaker—netted him his first Best Actor Oscar nomination.
“I love them both equally,” the 38-year-old told E! News at the Critics Choice Awards of the brooding, serious Smoke and more unpredictable Stack. “They’re both characters that are going to live with me for the rest of my life and I’m so happy that I got the honor to play both Smoke and Stack.”
Warner Bros. Pictures
Delroy Lindo, Sinners
Joining Jordan in being recognized for Coogler’s tour de force is veteran actor Lindo, who turned in a deft performance as wise elder Delta Slim.
His many credits include roles in Spike Lee‘s 1992 classic Malcolm X and 2020’s Da 5 Bloods—which saw Lindo, 73, collect a fair amount of Oscar buzz and a handful of trophies—plus work on a thesis that explored, as he described, “historical investigation of African-descended people in the geographical location that became the United Kingdom.”
So he was more than ready to dive into the Jim Crow South for Sinners. “My introduction was so dynamic and so rich, and I told Ryan that I seemed to disappear in the second act of the film,” Lindo reflected to The Ankler of the initial script. “I’m much more present than I was originally in that first draft.”
Warner Bros. Pictures
Wunmi Mosaku, Sinners
Had Nigeria-born, England-raised Mosaku—recognized in the supporting actress category as Sinners‘ Hoodoo practitioner Annie, Smoke’s estranged wife—not followed her acting dreams to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, her whole life “would have been different,” Mosaku acknowledged in a 2021 interview with Schon Magazine.
Instead, the 39-year-old collected a 2016 BAFTA for her work on the TV film Damilola, Our Loved Boy and moved to the United States where she nabbed roles in Luther, Lovecraft Country and Loki.
And yet she recalled feeling apprehensive ahead of her first audition opposite Jordan. “It was like, ‘This is Michael B. Jordan. This could feel really intimidating,'” she told W. Ultimately, though, “It was just so easy,” she noted. “There was a mutual respect, exploration, and collaboration. And then they offered me the job in the room, which was crazy.”
Neon via AP
Wagner Moura, The Secret Agent
The Best Actor Oscar nominee may be most familiar to North American audiences for his Golden Globe-nominated turn as Pablo Escobar in the Netflix series Narcos, but he’s a major star in his native Brazil. And that made his role in The Secret Agent as widowed professor Armando, who’s forced to leave one life behind for another due to his opposition to the country’s 1970s military dictatorship, all the more personal.
“Regarding injustice,” Moura told the Los Angeles Times, “I’m usually explosive and that reflects in the kind of characters that I play.” At the same time, he noted, “I love that this is not a film about someone who’s trying to overthrow the government—he’s just a guy who sticks with his values, with who he is.”
So far this year, the 49-year-old father of three picked up the Golden Globe win for Best Actor in a Motion Picture, Drama, and is also nominated for an Actor (previously SAG) Award.
Neon
Stellan Skarsgård, Sentimental Value
The veteran Swedish star known for Good Will Hunting, Mamma Mia!, Thor, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Dune, Chernobyl, Andor, his brooding indie collabs with Lars Von Trier and so much more had yet to have “Oscar nominee” on his CV—until now.
Skarsgård, 74, called the accolades he’s been getting for his supporting turn in Joaquim Trier‘s Sentimental Value as Gustav Borg, a revered director who wants to make a film about his family following the death of his ex-wife, much to his estranged daughters’ dismay, delightfully unexpected.
Especially since the father of eight thought he’d never act again after a stroke he suffered three years ago left him with short-term memory damage. Instead, he mastered out how to still be present in a scene while having his lines fed through an earpiece and ended up with the role of a lifetime.
“You can never tell how a film will hit,” Skarsgård, who won the 2026 Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture, told the LA Times, “but this one has reached everybody, every generation, every culture. It’s obviously touched something. And it’s remarkable, because in spite of its seriousness, it’s light. It’s like a soufflé with dark specks in it.”
Neon
Renate Reinsve, Sentimental Value
Sentimental Value is Reinsve’s third collab with Trier after 2011’s Oslo, August 31, her first film, and 2021’s The Worst Person in the World.
And playing Nora, an accomplished TV and theater actress who refuses to be in a film being directed by her estranged father and resists his attempts to reconcile, has resulted in the 38-year-old’s first Best Actress Oscar nomination.
The Norwegian star gives Trier a lot of credit for her growth as an actor over the years, as well as creating an environment that allows his cast to spread their wings.
“It’s not necessarily about my role and how I will do the role because that will come from the dynamic between everyone on set,” Reinsve told Deadline. “And it’s never about that one performance. It’s about what we want to talk about together in that scene or in the whole movie. And then it’s less pressure that way because it’s never about you or what you bring. It’s what occurs in the scene together with the other performers and the crew.”
Neon
Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Sentimental Value
The Norwegian performer, a Best Supporting Actress nominee for playing historian Agnes, Gustav’s more stoic and diplomatic daughter, said she connected deeply with the role.
“I see myself in [Agnes] in the way that I have a sister and a brother,” the 36-year-old, who also shares a son with actor husband Gunnar Eiriksson, told Deadline. “I know what it means to love them and be scared for them if anything were to happen to them. I know what it’s like to be in a family and want the family to work.”
Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for Palm Springs International Film Society
Elle Fanning, Sentimental Value
Admitted, “I would’ve said yes to Joachim, even if it was just one tiny little line,” Fanning told W of becoming obsessed with his work in The Worst Person in the World. Instead, she netted the part of Rachel, the young American who takes on the film role Reinsve’s Nora turns down.
Her Actress in a Supporting Role nod comes after nominations at the Critics Choice Awards and the Golden Globes and a 10/10 filming experience.
“I was an American actress coming to Norway for the first time, much like my character,” the 27-year-old detailed to W. “There were a lot of layers going on. I loved it there. It’s very clean, and everyone is riding around on their bikes. I kind of fit right in there.”
A24
Rose Byrne, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
“There’s humor, there’s horror, there’s fear, there’s gut-wrenching, raw trauma,” the Golden Globe winner for Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Musical/Comedy told W of Mary Bronstein‘s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, in which she plays a therapist who’s dealing with a sick child on top of a seemingly endless series of calamities.
“It was daunting, it was thrilling, it was radical, and I couldn’t even begin to think where to start with Linda, my character,” Byrne, who shares two children with partner Bobby Cannavale, explained. “I had a huge creative task, but it was also a great opportunity. My adrenaline was so high shooting the film. At the end, I felt very disoriented. I was scared to watch the finished film. I kept avoiding it. When I finally saw it, I was speechless.”
The Academy had something to say, however, and now Byrne, 46, is an Oscar nominee for Best Actress.
Courtesy of Netflix
Jacob Elordi, Frankenstein
The Australian actor may have been aided in his quest to transform into Frankenstein’s Creature by 42 prosthetics, but the pathos that shines through is all Elordi.
Hence the 28-year-old’s first Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor, following his surprise Critics Choice Award win and Golden Globe and Actor Award nominations.
“There’s a point where you have to leave the world behind,” Elordi told Netflix’s Tudum of giving himself over to the role. “You have to close all the doors to your house emotionally. You close your ears off and close your eyes off and change the way that you see things—all the regular things that you would do in a day, like eating and showering. They have to take on a new life to be able to shift into something else.”
Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
Teyana Taylor, One Battle After Another
All’s fair in love and war.
And while not every project can be a critical darling, Taylor’s 20 minutes of screen time playing amorous revolutionary turned “rat” Perfidia Beverly Hills was a one-way ticket to awards season, which now includes a Golden Globe win and her first Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination.
“A lot of movies that are being made right now are untouchable, and sometimes you just can’t relate,” the 35-year-old told the LA Times. “PTA’s characters are so beautifully flawed and so human and so raw that you come out of the movie and go, ‘Damn, did you go through that?’ That’s how you’re supposed to feel when you watch a movie. Shake the table. Shake the f–king table. Have the conversations. Have uncomfortable but healthy dialogue.”
Watch the Oscars 2026 Sunday, March 15, at 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT on ABC and streaming on Hulu.
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