The world was a very different place five years ago. The pandemic was killing thousands daily and, with vaccines only just beginning to roll out, normal life and work had largely ceased. Hollywood, meanwhile, was rocked by mandatory production shutdowns, theater closures and postponements of high-profile titles, from No Time to Die to West Side Story, while streamers — Netflix, Prime Video and Hulu, as well as newcomers Disney+ (November 2019), HBO Max (May 2020) and Peacock (July 2020) — became America’s go-to for distraction and comfort, accelerating an existential threat to the established order.
For nearly a century, the Oscars had been a constant, postponed three times — after the L.A. floods in 1938, the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 and the attempted assassination of President Reagan in 1981 — but never canceled. The ceremony went forward after Pearl Harbor, throughout World War II and in the wake of 9/11. But how could the 93rd Oscars, originally scheduled for Feb. 28, 2021, proceed when people couldn’t leave their homes without risking their lives? That was the question.
What follows is the answer, from interviews with more than 40 people, including Dr. Anthony Fauci; Simone Ledward Boseman, the widow of Chadwick Boseman; the producers of the telecast, including Steven Soderbergh, and its director; the Academy’s president and CEO at the time; and dozens of that year’s Oscar nominees and winners. It’s the story of an awards season unlike any other — one that stretched over 14 months and came to an end in, of all places, a train station in downtown L.A., with a ceremony that many felt went off the rails, even as its very occurrence was something of a miracle.
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI In the very early days, the information that was coming from China was not particularly transparent. They first said that the virus didn’t transmit very efficiently and was well controlled by classical public health methods. As weeks went by, it became clear [that it was worse], not from the Chinese authorities, but from the Chinese scientists saying, “Wait a minute, it really is spreading a bit more easily and efficiently than the original SARS, and people are getting really sick. Some of them are dying.” There was a satellite photo of the Chinese building thousand-bed hospitals at the same time they were saying, “No, it’s not so bad.” I started to get concerned. When Chinese people from Wuhan were visiting northern Italy for business, I was getting contacted by the Italians — whom I knew because many of them trained in my laboratory — and they told me, “Tony, no kidding, this is really, really bad.” When I got the real scoop from my Italian friends, I said, “We are in real trouble here.”
That was in February 2020. The 92nd Oscars, for unrelated reasons, had been moved up from March to Feb. 9, 2020. If it had not been, it would have been impacted by COVID too.
FAUCI COVID probably was much more prevalent under the radar screen than thought.
On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID a global pandemic; Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson tested positive; and President Trump announced a ban on travel from Europe. Days later, the Dow fell nearly 3,000 points, its biggest single-day drop. That same day, following the lowest-grossing weekend at the North American box office since 1998, Universal canceled the theatrical release of its film Trolls World Tour and sent it straight to PVOD. The following day, the nation’s three largest cinema chains — AMC, Cinemark and Regal — shut down all locations. And March 19, California issued a mandatory stay-at-home order. Plans for films with Oscar potential began to fall apart.
NICOLE NEWNHAM (CO-DIRECTOR OF THE DOCUMENTARY CRIP CAMP) We’d had our Sundance premiere at the Eccles [in January 2020] — we were the opening night film — and got this epic standing ovation. Then we went to the True/False Film Fest [March 5-8, 2020]. I remember we had our last screening there, and it was a packed house. Jim [Lebrecht, her co-director] and others wanted to go have lunch, and I was like, “I think I just want to sit here and experience this one more time.” Sure enough, that was the last time I saw it with an audience.
MAITE ALBERDI (DIRECTOR OF THE DOCUMENTARY THE MOLE AGENT) I was lucky in the sense that at least I had the chance to make the premiere at Sundance. It was my only experience of the film with an audience.
FLORIAN ZELLER (CO-WRITER/DIRECTOR, THE FATHER) The first screening was at Sundance, and there was a very enthusiastic reception. I was sitting next to Michael Barker from Sony Classics, and he said, “You should get used to this!” But that’s the only time I attended a screening of my film.
LEE ISAAC CHUNG (WRITER-DIRECTOR, MINARI) At Sundance, we had started hearing reports of it. We were talking to Youn Yuh-jung [one of the film’s stars] about the need for her to be careful as she was flying back to Korea. We knew there were cases in Asia, but we didn’t know what was coming.
RAMIN BAHRANI (WRITER-DIRECTOR, THE WHITE TIGER) Netflix’s policy was, “We’re not going to any festivals during COVID.” We had an online premiere, and people were “invited.” They got a link and — Netflix was so generous — a beautiful package in the mail with food, and DoorDash was delivered to their house.
PETE DOCTER (HEAD OF PIXAR AND CO-WRITER/DIRECTOR, SOUL) We had spent four-plus years on the movie. We were approaching the end, and then, bam! Within days, though, we were back up — we’re lucky because in animation you can do it somewhat remotely — so I was sitting in my bedroom watching dailies and finalizing shots. As the film approached release, it got delayed and delayed again. Finally Bob Iger and Alan Bergman called: “We are going to put it on Disney+.” At first, I thought that was something to be discussed, and then I quickly realized, “Oh no, they’re just telling me.” I’ll be honest, it was pretty heartbreaking.
MADELINE SHARAFIAN (DIRECTOR OF THE ANIMATED SHORT BURROW) Pete Docter is my hero, and he had asked me, “Hey, would it be cool if I put Burrow in front of Soul?” I was like, “Would it be cool? This is the best day of my life!” But unfortunately Soul ended up being released on Disney+.
DARIUS MARDER (CO-WRITER/DIRECTOR, SOUND OF METAL) Sound of Metal took me 12 years to make. I worked extremely hard, and I managed to set up a theatrical release for it with a three-month window, which was pretty hard to accomplish with Amazon. Then COVID happened, so there was no theatrical.
KEMP POWERS (WRITER, ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI, AND CO-WRITER, SOUL) Both films got into a bunch of film festivals, all of which were either canceled or we couldn’t attend. Soul was selected for Cannes, which got canceled. One Night in Miami debuted in Venice, but we couldn’t go. For One Night in Miami, we did a drive-in premiere in Malibu. They actually did a red carpet where people drove their cars through a red carpet.
One film that was already in the can, having shot in 2019, was Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, which starred Chadwick Boseman, best known for Black Panther. Unbeknownst to any of his collaborators, Boseman made the movie while battling colorectal cancer.
SIMONE LEDWARD BOSEMAN (WIDOW OF CHADWICK BOSEMAN) It’s so strange to talk about it in these words because obviously with COVID so many people lost loved ones. But the timing of lockdown for what we were going through was honestly ideal. I am really grateful for that time.
Academy officials were desperately trying to figure out how to move forward, all while working remotely.
DAWN HUDSON (ACADEMY CEO) Every day was hell, to be honest. We were operating 12 hours a day. We did that for a whole year.
To be eligible in most Oscars categories, a film had to screen for one week in a commercial theater in Los Angeles County. Before theaters shut down, though, only a handful of films had qualified. The Academy decided it had to act. On April 28, its board of governors met via Zoom and determined that films that had been intended for a theatrical release prior to COVID would be allowed to qualify that year via the Academy’s members-only streaming service — which, fortuitously, had been opened to all films only months before.
SHAWN FINNIE (ACADEMY OFFICIAL) Thank God, because I don’t know what eligibility would’ve possibly looked like without it.
Academy president David Rubin and CEO Dawn Hudson said in a statement: “The Academy firmly believes there is no greater way to experience the magic of movies than to see them in a theater. Our commitment to that is unchanged and unwavering. Nonetheless, COVID-19 pandemic necessitates this temporary exception to our awards eligibility rules.”
Several weeks later, on June 15, the Academy announced that it was extending the close of that cycle’s Oscars eligibility window from Dec. 31, 2020, to Feb. 28, 2021, and was pushing back the 93rd Oscars from Feb. 28, 2021 to April 25, 2021. Not long after, in a sign of the times, the Academy announced that it would also allow films to qualify via drive-in screenings.
Meanwhile, America was on fire. On May 25, George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, was killed by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin while being arrested.
TRAVON FREE (WRITER/CO-DIRECTOR OF THE SHORT TWO DISTANT STRANGERS) I started seeing the video online before it made its way onto the news. It was so heinous; you couldn’t believe what you were seeing. I think that’s why it culminated in the largest global protest ever. We came back from a protest in downtown L.A., and I said, “This is the worst version of Groundhog Day ever,” and that was the seed of the idea for the film. I wrote it at the end of June in five days, and we shot it in September in five days, during the only window that L.A. allowed anyone to film in L.A. They opened everything up for one week, and we happened to have our permits for that one week.
Speaking of production opening back up, several people who would later play key roles in the 93rd Oscars were instrumental in making that possible. Filmmaker Steven Soderbergh, who had learned about pandemics and befriended experts while making his 2011 film Contagion, headed the Directors Guild’s COVID-19 Safety Committee and helped write the report “The Safe Way Forward,” published June 12. And from Aug. 17-20, live TV maven Glenn Weiss produced the virtual Democratic National Convention, at which Joe Biden was nominated, from a temporary studio in his home.
Meanwhile, Boseman’s health was rapidly declining, and to the shock of the world, he died on Aug. 28. He did get to see the film for which he would posthumously receive widespread recognition, even though it would not drop on Netflix until Nov. 25.
BOSEMAN We did get a chance to see it because he was going to have to do press. What I remember most, more than the watching of the film, were the conversations around knowing that they were going to be pushing toward award season and reconciling with what he was going to be able to participate in and what he wasn’t going to be able to do because of where he was. Those were hard conversations to have. I think that’s when members of his team started to recognize, “OK, something’s wrong.”
A JOLT TO THE OSCARS INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
Given that the Oscars remained on the calendar and people had little else to do, campaigning continued. FYC billboards went up around L.A., though few were leaving their homes. Interviews, Q&As and panels moved online. With everyone at their wit’s end, these sometimes took strange turns. During a Zoom Q&A for Mank, filmmaker Paul Schrader was called on and asked Amanda Seyfried if she thought that Marion Davies, whom she played in the film, was — randomly quoting Nicolas Winding Refn’s film Only God Forgives — William Randolph Hearst’s “cum dumpster,” leaving Seyfried and dozens of Academy members shocked.
RIZ AHMED (ACTOR, SOUND OF METAL) The Zoom meeting is now familiar to everyone, but it was the start of that. I remember Hollywood Reporter roundtables, Actors on Actors, all of it — we were little boxes on screens. That became the new normal.
POWERS I’d be lying if I didn’t say that many times I was wearing sweatpants — or no pants.
GLENN CLOSE (ACTRESS, HILLBILLY ELEGY) If you were lucky, you had good lighting at home.
ZELLER I was in France, so I would wake up in the middle of the night and do a Zoom.
PAUL RACI (ACTOR, SOUND OF METAL) Zoom after Zoom, saying the same things. It was depressing, although at the same time I had to stay excited putting on my minstrel show, “Hey, everybody, look at me!”
CHUNG There was no excuse for not being able to make a meeting.
MARDER There was no talking to people afterward. There were no meals. There was no travel. There was no joy. It was just being in front of your screen, having hundreds and hundreds of interviews.
JON BATISTE (COMPOSER, SOUL] During awards season, I was also taping The Late Show with my friend Stephen Colbert, also on Zoom. So for five shows a week I would be on Zooms, and simultaneously I was also doing the campaign around our film on Zoom.
LAKEITH STANFIELD (ACTOR, JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH) Doing everything remotely felt convenient at first, but it quickly started to feel dystopian.
