Entertainment Weekly‘s March 2 2012 issue features the mag’s exclusive interview with Oscars host Billy Crystal!
No one knows the ins and outs of hosting the Academy Awards better than Billy Crystal. For the eight-time host, who will take the stage this Sunday to emcee Hollywood’s biggest night for the first time in eight years, the Oscars have always been deeply personal. ”When I would first watch it—[at] 6 or 7 years old, watching on a black-and-white TV—I very rarely could stay up until the Best Picture award, so my mother would write down who won and when I came into the kitchen the next morning, the list of winners would be in my cereal bowl,” he tells EW in an exclusive, wide-ranging interview in this week’s issue. “It’s important that the show be good, and I take it really seriously.”
Still, when he makes his entrance for this year’s show, Crystal may not find that Oscar stage as cozy a place as he did 21 years ago, when he first took on the gig. Ratings for the telecast have steadily ebbed in recent years. Crystal says he knows how high the stakes are for this year’s show: “There’s a big responsibility to the job—I think more so this year because people were not happy last year,” he says. “I’ve got to deliver.”
For more of our interview with Crystal—including the never-before-reported backstory on how he came to host this year’s show, his Oscar-watching ritual at home, and his thoughts on which movies should have gotten more Oscar love this year—pick up the new issue of Entertainment Weekly, on stands this Friday.
Photo: Entertainment Weekly
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