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Variety, Huffington Post

Will Neil Patrick Harris Host the Oscars Again? Here’s His Surprisingly Candid Response to the Question

Mar 6, 2015  •  Post A Comment

After hosting the Academy Awards on Feb. 22, TV fixture Neil Patrick Harris was asked the obvious question: Will he do it again?

Variety reports that Harris responded to the question in an interview with The Huffington Post by saying: “I don’t know that my family nor my soul could take it. 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.”

The report adds: “The ‘How I Met Your Mother’ star says that every laugh was planned meticulously for the show, despite criticism that the show seemed too improvised and featured an abundance of unnecessary jokes on race. The jests ranged from Harris’ kick-off joke, ‘Today, we honor the best and whitest. Sorry, brightest’ to Sean Penn later questioning how ‘Birdman’ director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu got his green card.”

Harris adds: “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. And I’m not saying that to defend everything I said as if it was the absolute best choice, 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.”

The report notes that viewership for the ceremony fell 16% from last year’s Oscars, to the lowest total in six years.

neil-patrick-harris-oscars-10152014-140425Neil Patrick Harris

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