Conan O’Brien Recaps Oscar Hosting Stint: The ‘Wicked’ Comedy Bit That Nearly Opened The Show, ‘Dune’ Sandworm Moments That Never Aired, And One Gag Nixed By Academy Brass

deadline.com:

There was nearly a very different nod to Wicked at the start of this year’s Oscar telecast, according to host Conan O’Brien.

Instead of the duet by the film’s leads, Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo, the initial plan called for a four-minute spoof video putting O’Brien into many of the year’s top films, including Wicked. “It was the idea that, ‘Oh, Conan’s now going to goof on all the movies,'” O’Brien said on his podcast, Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend. “It starts with me and I’m in Wicked and I’m all green, finishing ‘Defying Gravity’ or one of those songs.

And I finish it and then you cut to the next thing, which is Gladiator II and ‘clang, clang, clang’ with swords and you see that I’m a gladiator but then you notice that I’m still green.

And then you go on to Conclave and you see people voting with their ballots and one of the hands is still green.” After he shows up, still green, in Dune: Part Two, O’Brien continued, Javier Bardem breaks the fourth wall and asks O’Brien if he started shooting the parody by putting on the Wicked makeup. “The whole thing was that the dye wouldn’t come off and we had to shoot it in one day,” he said.