The former 'How I Met Your Mother' actor calls the Academy Awards hosting job a 'beast' and says, 'I don't know that it's a delightful balance to do every year or even again.'
- March 6, 2015
AceShowbiz -
Neil Patrick Harris is unlikely to host the Academy Awards for the second time following the mixed reviews for his first gig this year. "I don't know that my family nor my soul could take it," he said. "It's a beast. It was fun to check off the list, but for the amount of time spent and the understandable opinionated response, I don't know that it's a delightful balance to do every year or even again."
"It was interesting to see just what people thought landed and didn't," he said to The Huffington Post of the online feedback. "It's so difficult for one who's simply watching the show to realize just how much time and concession and compromise and explanation has gone into almost every single thing. Every joke. Wording of joke. Placement of joke. Canceling of joke. Embellishment for just one line."
"And I'm not saying that to defend everything I said as if it was the absolute best choice," he added. "But it's also an award show, and you're powering through 14 acts filled with 20 plus awards. So my job was to try and keep things as light and specific to this year's set of films as possible. And if people are critical of that, it's a big giant platform, so I would assume that they would be."
"I was glad we got through it, and I thought that those in the audience at the Dolby [Theatre] seemed to be enjoying themselves more as the show went on, when I was told that the opposite would be true," he explained. "I was told that as the room fills, with you know it's four-fifths of the room didn't win, and you get further into the award giving they get less enthusiastic and less excited. And I felt while we were doing it that people were enjoying themselves more and more, so for that I'm happy."
Neil Patrick Harris had big shoes to fill at the Oscars after Ellen DeGeneres crashed Twitter and helped last year's event hit the highest ratings in more than a decade. This year was watched by 36.6 million viewers while last year drew 43.7 million. The 2015 Oscars fell down 16|percent| in ratings from last year and reached the lowest mark in six years.
