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    What to Know about ‘Unfrosted’ and the Real History of Pop-Tarts

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    In his directorial debut, Jerry Seinfeld tackles the history of the fruit-filled pastries … kind of. Here’s the real origin story, along with a bonus quiz.First, there was the Flamin’ Hot Cheetos biopic (complete with an Oscar-nominated song). Then came “Tetris”; “Air,” about Nike Air Jordan sneakers; “BlackBerry”; and “Barbie.”It is, in other words, a golden age for product-origin-story movies.The latest is “Unfrosted: The Pop-Tarts Story,” a satirical history that Jerry Seinfeld has expanded from his stand-up act. The film, which he directed and stars in alongside Jim Gaffigan, Hugh Grant and Amy Schumer, arrives Friday on Netflix. Unlike its predecessors, it’s not really concerned with actual events. Here’s what to know about the true history of the Pop-Tart — and what the movie gets right and wrong.But first, how did Kellogg’s and Post both end up with headquarters in Battle Creek, Mich.?You would think ground zero in the Breakfast Wars of the 1960s might be somewhere most people could locate on a map. But Battle Creek, Mich., was home to the Battle Creek Sanitarium, known for its water and fresh air treatments, and managed by Will Keith Kellogg and his brother, John Harvey Kellogg. W.K. Kellogg developed a method of creating crunchy pieces of processed grain for his patients (read: Corn Flakes), and one of those patients, C.W. Post, would go on to start his own company in 1895 selling several foods that were veeeery similar to those at the sanitarium.W.K. Kellogg noticed Post profiting from his recipes and established his own firm in 1906, the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company. Within three years, it was cranking out more than 100,000 boxes of Corn Flakes a day, and, thanks to the success of Kellogg, Post and many other cereal companies, Battle Creek became known as the Cereal City. Who were the real Edsel Kellogg III and Marjorie Merriweather Post?Melissa McCarthy, Seinfeld and Jim Gaffigan in “Unfrosted.”Columbus 81 ProductionsThe bumbling chief executive of Kellogg’s, played by Gaffigan, is fictional (thank goodness). On the other hand, Marjorie Merriweather Post — the General Foods owner whom Schumer portrays as a turban-wearing caricature — was one of the first female chief executives and, for most of her life, considered the wealthiest woman in America. (Today she may be best known for building Mar-a-Lago, now Donald J. Trump’s base.)Did Post really come up with a toaster-prepared breakfast pastry first?Yes. In the 1960s, Post, then the biggest competitor to Kellogg’s, invented a process of partly dehydrating food and wrapping it in foil to keep it fresh; no refrigeration required. The process was initially used for dog food, but it also allowed fruit filling in, say, a toaster-prepared breakfast pastry to stay both moist and bacteria-free. (And yes, it was actually Post’s idea, not one ripped off from a Kellogg’s employee via a hidden vacuum cam.)Was the Post product really called Country Squares?Unfortunately, yes. The name was later changed to its current Toast’em Pop Ups, but is that really much better?How did Country Squares and Pop-Tarts end up hitting shelves the same year?Post jumped the gun and unveiled Country Squares to the press in February 1964, four months before they were ready to sell, allowing Kellogg’s time to frantically rustle up its own, much-better-named version.Did Bob Cabana really create the Pop-Tart?Nope, the “Unfrosted” flack (played by Seinfeld) is fictional. The man who helped create Pop-Tarts was a manager named William Post (yes, really), who died in February at 96.Gaffigan, left, Seinfeld, Fred Armisen and McCarthy with boxes of the film’s version of Pop-Tarts with an early (made-up) name.Columbus 81 ProductionsWhat was an actual rejected name for the Pop-Tart?The ones in the film — Fruit-Magoos, Heat ’Em Up and Eat ’Em Ups, Oblong Nibblers, Trat Pops — are made up. But the real rejected name — Fruit Scones — wasn’t much catchier. The final name, coined by a Kellogg’s executive, William LaMothe, was inspired by Pop Art, the contemporary cultural movement.Were Pop-Tarts really an overnight hit?Yes, but the first shipment to stores sold out in two weeks, not 60 seconds, as in “Unfrosted.” Kellogg’s apologized, in advertisements, but this only increased demand. (They were restocked before long.)Were the first flavors really unfrosted?Yes. The original flavors — all unfrosted — were Apple Currant Jelly, Strawberry, Blueberry and Brown Sugar-Cinnamon. The first frosted ones — Dutch Apple, Concord Grape, Raspberry and Brown Sugar-Cinnamon — didn’t hit the market until 1967. (William Post came up with the idea, disproving skeptics who believed the icing would melt in the toaster.) The next year, sprinkles were added to some of the frosted ones.Did Kellogg’s really advertise Pop-Tarts without a mascot?It did, though the decision didn’t set off a Hugh Grant-led mascot rebellion, as in “Unfrosted.” Kellogg’s rectified the omission in 1971, introducing Milton the Toaster. (The little guy didn’t make it out of the 1970s.)Which of these flavors are real?The past few decades have been a smorgasbord of Pop-Tart flavors, some very short-lived. Can you spot the four real flavors here?Chocolate PeppermintFroot LoopsGuava MangoHarry Potter Special Edition: Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans, PopcornMaple BaconTwizzlersAnswer: Chocolate Peppermint, Froot Loops, Guava Mango and Maple Bacon Pop-Tarts have all been on shelves at some point. The Harry Potter Bertie Bott’s Popcorn and Twizzlers flavors remain the stuff of our fever dreams. More

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      in Theater

      When Jewish Artists Wrestle With Antisemitism

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      In this unsettling moment, comedians, filmmakers, playwrights and others have been struggling against a long-ingrained American response to look away.Antisemitism has such a long, violent history that it seems absurd to claim it’s getting worse. Compared with when? And yet, there’s something about our current moment that feels different.Consider a recent Sunday. I woke up to news reports that two men were arrested at Penn Station with weapons, a swastika armband and a social media history of threats to attack a synagogue. After taking a shower, I opened my dresser to find my Kyrie Irving T-shirt. The Brooklyn Net was returning to the N.B.A. that evening after being suspended for tweeting a link to a documentary that cast doubt on the Holocaust.I didn’t expect getting dressed in the morning to turn into a test of loyalties between my favorite basketball team and my murdered ancestors, but here we are.That night, when I arrived at Barclays Center, scores of people belonging to what the Southern Poverty Law Center labels a hate group were handing out pamphlets with the blaring headline “The Truth About Antisemitism.” I opened Twitter and saw Elon Musk was making fun of the Anti-Defamation League and Ye was tweeting again. He had kicked off the recent cycle of discourse by leveling violent threats against Jews.Quantifying antisemitism right now by numbers of hate crimes is useful, but doesn’t capture the peculiar anguish and human complexities of its day-to-day pervasiveness. That’s a job better suited to artists, and more than any year in memory, some of our most accomplished ones have taken up the challenge, from the biggest names in comedy (Dave Chappelle, Amy Schumer) to the most celebrated storytellers in theater and film, like Tom Stoppard and Steven Spielberg. What resonates most in this impressive body of work are the Jewish artists exploring the challenge of antisemitism, and while they started these projects years ago, their hard-earned pessimism now seems uncomfortably prophetic.The thorniest recent work on these issues was the “Saturday Night Live” monologue by Dave Chappelle. He poked fun at Ye and Irving while speaking to the antisemitic idea of a Jewish conspiracy in Hollywood. In between myriad jokes, he shrugged off this stereotype as an understandable thought best not verbalized. One of the maddening traps of modern antisemitism is that it takes a source of pride — Jewish success in the arts, the rare field where we were welcome — and makes it seem sinister. This old tactic got a new hearing.There are a lot of Jews in Hollywood, Chappelle observed mischievously, before undercutting the comment with a joke that called the trope that they control show business “a delusion.” Unlike the blunt social media posts of Ye and Irving, this set was a work of art, elusive and layered, displaying finesse and paradox. It’s a prickly kind of funny with corkscrew punch lines that tickled the mind and bothered the conscience. (“If they’re Black then it’s a gang, if they’re Italian it’s a mob, but if they’re Jewish it’s a coincidence and you should never speak about it.”)Dave Chappelle on “Saturday Night Live.” His monologue was a prickly kind of funny that bothered the conscience.Will Heath/NBCArt can be formally beautiful and morally ugly. Despite what you have heard, good comedy can be built on lies as easily as on the truth. This is what makes Chappelle’s set so slippery: His storytelling and gravitas are so magnetic that you can miss how far he goes in making the old slur of a Jewish conspiracy seem reasonable. He whitewashed Irving’s tolerance for Holocaust denial with one good line. With another, he says you can’t “blame Black people” for Jewish pain, erecting a straw man with deftness. To suggest, as he does, that it’s dangerous for him to say “the Jews” is tiresome hyperbole.For as much controversy as this set provoked, it was also predictable. How often have we seen Chappelle bring up celebrity transgression, and then defend, mitigate and complicate it, while inviting us to admire the feat? This is his move. There’s no wondering where he will come down on the latest scandal. We know.Antisemitism in AmericaAntisemitism is one of the longest-standing forms of prejudice, and those who monitor it say it is now on the rise across the country.Perilous Times: With online threats and incidents of harassment and violence rising nationwide, this fall has become increasingly worrisome for American Jews.Donald Trump: The former president had dinner with Nick Fuentes, a prominent antisemite, at Mar-a-Lago, causing some of Mr. Trump’s Jewish allies to speak out.Kanye West: The rapper and designer, who now goes by Ye, has been widely condemned for recent antisemitic comments. The fallout across industries has been swift.Kyrie Irving: The Nets lifted their suspension of the basketball player, who offered “deep apologies” for posting a link to an antisemitic film. His behavior appalled and frightened many of his Jewish fans.EARLIER THIS YEAR, I wrote about the Jewish tendency to turn antisemitism into comedy. But there’s another coping mechanism that we like to talk about less: looking the other way. When asked about Chappelle’s monologue, Jerry Seinfeld diplomatically told The Hollywood Reporter that “the subject matter calls for more conversation.” When asked about it as a guest on “The Late Show,” Jon Stewart only became earnest when he pleaded for free speech. What’s striking about these responses from star comics is that they seem to be more interested in calling for debate than engaging in it.Then again, I get it. I’ve stayed quiet when peers wrote things that seemed, if not indifferent to Jewish pain, then at least to be applying double standards to it. I gave them the benefit of the doubt or concluded that a call-out would be counterproductive. But saying nothing in the face of such moments exacts its own cost. It eats at you. Several Jewish artists have been making work that explores such decisions with a skeptical eye.In “The Patient,” a sly, suspenseful FX series from Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg, creators of “The Americans,” a therapist played by Steve Carell awakens to find himself chained to the bed of a serial killer looking for help with his mental health. The title is a reference to this maniac as well as the way his therapist responds.The killer says he was looking for a therapist who is Jewish, a specific request that goes uncommented on. Small moments tip you off to a tolerated culture of antisemitism. In a flashback, the therapist, Alan, spots a swastika on a poster and, instead of making a fuss, keeps walking.Steve Carell as a therapist and Domhnall Gleeson as a serial killer in “The Patient,” which raises the urgent question of how to fight back.Suzanne Tenner/FXNow he has no such option. Imprisoned by a captor who wants something from him, he is faced with the urgent question of how to fight back. He chooses to use his skills in mental health to help his oppressor get better. The deeper he gets in dialogue, though, the more uncomfortable Alan grows, especially after he teaches the murderer the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, and then sees it being used to mourn his latest victims.In many ways, the relationship at the center of “The Patient” is a metaphor for both the lengths Jews will go to extend empathy toward their oppressors and for the existential toll that takes. Playing a man wracked by guilt, grief and doubt, Carell is extremely subtle illustrating how accommodation can be justified and yet wear you down. We also see scenes in his head of him talking to a shrink (David Alan Grier) who asks why he doesn’t fight back, attack the killer. To which Alan replies: “I’m using what I have.” Grier, a figment of his imagination, flashes a look that suggests he doesn’t believe that.Similarly, “The Fabelmans” and “Armageddon Time,” two personal movies by Jewish directors dramatizing their own childhoods, grapple with the question of what weapons Jews have. In both, sensitive boys facing antisemitism at school struggle with how to stand up for themselves.“The Fabelmans” isn’t a movie about being Jewish so much as it is suffused with Jewishness. But when its young protagonist, Sammy Fabelman, moves to California in the 1960s, he’s confronted with Aryan boys who mock his religion and with gentile girls intrigued by it. He happily prays with one girl but puts up a fight with the bullies, who at first seem like the cartoon villains from early Spielberg movies. The most dramatic way Sammy pushes back is by putting his antagonists in a movie. After filming his classmates on a trip to the beach, the footage, shown to the whole school, makes one bully look ridiculous and another glamorous, bigger than life. Oddly, being romanticized by the Jewish kid he beat up rattles the bully more than any insult. His discontent in the face of this attention is the most baffling section in the movie, one that has the ring of a point being made. But what is the point?Is the antisemite feeling shame? If so, Spielberg is working hard to extend empathy. But this exchange also rattles Sammy. When the bigot demands to know why Sammy made him look like a star, the response sounds pained and unsure: “Maybe I did it to make the movie better?”It’s a shockingly unsentimental moment to find in a Spielberg movie, one in which the young version of himself learns that pleasing the crowd might require turning an antisemite into the hero. No one loves the movies more than Spielberg, and in this intimate, morally probing film, he shows how they can move, inspire and reveal the truth. But in these more hardheaded scenes, he also makes it clear that their impact can be unpredictable, and like comedy, they can deceive just as deftly.Chloe East as a classmate intrigued by the religion of the Steven Spielberg stand-in, played by Gabriel LaBelle.Merie Weismiller Wallace/Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment, via Associated PressIn “Armageddon Time,” a humbler, realistic and affectingly bleak portrait of the struggles of a young Jewish kid, James Gray digs into his 1980s Queens upbringing in the story of an 11-year-old boy named Paul Graff whose grandfather is the son of a refugee who fled pogroms in Europe. The patriarch tells him that changing his name (from Grasserstein) will help him in life. This same man urges him to speak up when other students make racist comments to a peer. These are the competing messages he grows up with: assimilate or fight back.A friendship with a Black classmate also makes clear to Paul how not all inequities are the same, that his privilege protects him in a way that other minority groups don’t experience. In a time when Black and Jewish communities are pitted against each other by entertainers like Ye and others, this movie feels exceedingly topical and depressing. It painfully dramatizes how antisemitism can lead Jews to overlook other injustices, protect your tribe and harden your heart to the plight of others.As with Spielberg’s movie, the new play by Tom Stoppard, “Leopoldstadt,” is being described as his most personal as well as a reckoning with his Jewish identity, which in his case he didn’t understand until middle age. It’s also one of his worst plays: intellectually thin, overly familiar, blandly generic. If the way you tell the audience it’s the 1920s is by a woman dancing the Charleston, you’ve become too comfortable with cliché. And yet, this sprawling portrait of a half century in the life of a Jewish family from Vienna is drawing sold-out crowds of weeping audiences.I suspect the reason is the timely and heavy-handed portrait of Jewish complacency and denial. We see this most nakedly in the stand-in for the playwright, a comic writer born Leopold Rosenbaum who now goes by Leonard Chamberlin (a name that evokes the prime minister famous for appeasement). In 1955, Chamberlin is glibly naïve about the Holocaust, a patriotic fool set up for tears when remembering the horrors of the Nazis. The play ends with a roll call of the dead. Of course, the audience cries.TWO THINGS STAND OUT about these dramas, whether onscreen or onstage: The first is that none of the Jewish protagonists are exactly triumphant in the face of antisemitism. Therapy, the movies, assimilation — nothing saves them. These characters are ambivalent, morally compromised or far worse. When it comes to their ability to protest an antisemitic culture, pessimism reigns.The second is how much these works look to the past, exploring the current moment through a historical lens. (That includes Bess Wohl’s play “Camp Siegfried,” a drama about a 1938 Nazi youth camp on Long Island whose themes are clearly meant to echo with today.) Even the contemporary “The Patient” borrows its most blunt power from flashbacks to the moral simplicity of concentration camps. Looking at history can be a useful way to understand the present, but it can also be a way to evade it. One wonders what Stoppard would come up with if he dramatized the more subtle Jewish denial of the cultural world he came up in, where he flourished as a playwright whose religion never seemed to come up. Or how Spielberg or Gray would capture the conflicts of Jewish life now.As usual, comics are the artists taking the earliest and most direct approaches. David Baddiel, a British comic, is receiving glowing reviews this month for a BBC documentary version of his book “Jews Don’t Count” that castigates the double standards applied to prejudice against Jews in progressive spaces today. Marc Maron’s next special, which recently taped in New York, begins a series of jokes on the increased prominence of conspiracies about Jews by saying that in this polarized country, antisemitism is one thing that brings everyone together. At the Kennedy Center Honors, Sacha Baron Cohen, in character as the antisemite Borat, skewered Ye and sang a brief parody version of U2’s “With or Without You,” switching the lyrics to “With or Without Jews.”Amy Schumer is one of the few sketch comics to dig into antisemitism today, lampooning the tentativeness our culture has for calling it out in the new season of “Inside Amy Schumer.” She imagines a workplace harassment seminar where everyone is hypersensitive to all kinds of slights except antisemitic ones. It’s a premise that not only counters the trope of a Jewish conspiracy but also taps into the paranoia of being gaslit by an entire culture. It hints at what a Jewish “Get Out” could look like.Part of the resilience of antisemitism is its resistance to critique. Jewish artists are obviously not going to end the lie that they control show business by making more movies, plays, TV shows or sketches about it. But they can illuminate its impact and capture the complex damage it does to the psyche. That matters. For a certain kind of Jew, art can be its own religion. And one lesson we keep learning and forgetting is that the greatest art is much better at portraying conflicted minds than changing them. More

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      in Television

      On ‘S.N.L.’, President Biden Has Two Words on the Midterms: ‘Big Yikes’

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      Amy Schumer hosted a “Saturday Night Live” episode that contemplated the coming elections and Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter.On the weekend before the 2022 midterm elections, “Saturday Night Live” turned to James Austin Johnson, its resident impersonator of President Biden, to assess how Democratic candidates might fare at the polls. And, well, he wanted to make a lot of last-minute substitutions.This episode, hosted by Amy Schumer and featuring the musical guest Steve Lacy, began with Johnson as Biden speaking directly to the electorate. “My fellow Americans,” he said, “this Tuesday, our midterm elections will determine the fate of our democracy, and let’s just say: Big yikes.”He continued: “What’s going on? I guess the Democrats’ message just ain’t getting through. Plus, I’m over here, talking to people who don’t exist. I don’t know much. Who’s that? Oh, nobody’s there.”Even so, Johnson’s Biden said he was pushing himself as hard as he could: “I’m on the Peloton every morning, tempting fate,” he said. He reminded voters of past accomplishments, like an infrastructure bill that provided red states with broadband internet “so you can share your Paul Pelosi gay erotic fiction at light speed.”The problem with his party, Johnson said, is that “we don’t have any stars anymore — too many Raphael Warnocks and not enough Herschel Walkers.”“Which is why we’re going to make some last-minute changes before Tuesday with the Democrats who are exciting,” he continued.Among them, Johnson introduced the free-spirited 2020 presidential candidate Marianne Williamson (Chloe Fineman). Describing herself as “a prominent author and Level 4 enchantress,” Fineman said, “I am ready to fight for the American dream — which I caught in this Tibetan singing bowl.”Other replacement candidates included the goateed restaurateur Guy Fieri (Molly Kearney), who bellowed, “Do y’all want Dr. Oz’s crudité or a full plate of paid family leave, dripping in donkey sauce?”Johnson brought out the adult film star Stormy Daniels (Cecily Strong) and the rappers Tekashi 6ix9ine (Marcello Hernandez) and Azealia Banks (Ego Nwodim). He also introduced the “S.N.L.” alum Tracy Morgan (played in the sketch by Kenan Thompson), who Johnson said would be in charge of student-loan forgiveness.“Y’all want that money?” Thompson asked. “Why don’t you come on over here, rub my belly?”Host monologue of the weekSchumer, the stand-up comic and star of the sketch series “Inside Amy Schumer,” returned to host “S.N.L.” for the first time since 2018. Since last hosting, she has become a mother, but parenthood and the passage of the years have hardly softened Schumer’s occasionally racy sensibilities (and vocabulary).Among the portions of her routine we can safely recount here, Schumer joked about people who gave her advice during her pregnancy: “I had this one friend, she kept telling me: ‘You gotta do prenatal yoga. It really helps with the birth,’” Schumer said. “So I immediately signed up. For a C-section.”She also talked about life with her husband after he was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. On a rainy night, she said, she told him that being with him and their son had been the best years of her life.“He just looked at me and he said, ‘I’m going to go put the windows up in the car,’” Schumer recounted, adding affectionately: “That’s my guy. It’s one of the times we play the game Autism, or Just a Man?”Fake commercial of the weekIn what begins as a seemingly standard pharmaceutical ad, a voice-over asks: “Are you feeling tired and worn down? Sick of the endless grind at work? Exhausted by your family, desperate for some peace and quiet?”Don’t feel ashamed if you caught yourself agreeing with one or more of those propositions before you learned it was, in fact, a advertisement for Covid — you know, the highly communicable disease responsible for the pandemic — which here is touted for having fringe benefits, like getting you out of work and child-care duties.Probably not a sketch that “S.N.L.” would have attempted a year or two ago, but as the voice-over reminds you: “Side effects of Covid include having Covid, which is still kind of bad, but doesn’t it seem different now?”Obligatory Twitter sketch of the weekEven in an episode that was largely focused on the midterms, you knew “S.N.L.” would find a way to revisit the chaotic energy unleashed by Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter. This weekend’s sketch was inspired by Musk’s announcement that the company would establish a content moderation council — in this case, a two-person team (Thompson and Fineman) who say they are the only two Twitter employees who haven’t been fired yet — to consider the reinstatement of suspended users.The council heard the pleas of various characters played by Schumer, Strong, Bowen Yang and Punkie Johnson, and then finally from former President Donald Trump (James Austin Johnson), who wanted his account back, too. “I won’t do anything bad except maybe coup,” he vowed.Weekend Update jokes of the weekOver at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che riffed on President Biden’s recent speech about American democracy and on the New Jersey Nets’ suspension of Kyrie Irving for promoting an antisemitic documentary.Jost began:President Biden, seen here begging for one more year before the midterms, warned about Republican candidates who say they will refuse to accept election results, warning they could set the nation on a path to chaos. So wait, this is just the path to chaos? I thought we’d been living in chaos for at least six years. I mean, Nancy Pelosi’s husband was attacked in their home by a guy with a hammer, and instead of even basic sympathy, Republicans were like, “We heard he gay.”He continued:Donald Trump Jr. mocked the attack on Pelosi’s husband by posting an image of a hammer and a pair of underpants, with the message, “Got my Paul Pelosi Halloween costume ready.” And I would agree that Don Jr. is probably the expert on getting hammered in your underwear. Also, Don Jr., is that your underwear, man? Why is it so dirty and stretched out? You were trying to burn Paul Pelosi, but now I’m just wondering if you wear your dad’s old underwear.Che then pivoted to the news about Irving:After meeting with the Anti-Defamation League, Kyrie Irving announced that from now on, he will pretend to not be antisemitic. Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving was suspended after he tweeted a link to the antisemitic film “Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America.” You know, Hebrews II Negroes was also the name of my favorite R&B group in the ’90s.Deskside segment of the weekStrong missed the first three “S.N.L.” episodes of this season while she performed a revival of the one-woman show “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe” in Los Angeles. But she has been rapidly making up for lost time with appearances like this one, a companion piece of sorts to her Goober the Clown segment from last season.The name of this latest character, “Tammy the Trucker, Who Promises She’s Here to Talk About Gas Prices and Definitely Not Abortion,” pretty much says it all, and Strong could just barely pretend to turn a steering wheel or care about trucker lingo as she declared, “You shouldn’t have to pull the convoy across state lines to find a doctor who can provide health care for your anatomy without having to call their lawyer first.”In closing, she reminded viewers to vote because, as she put it, “We all love someone who’s had an abortion — I mean, drives a truck.” More

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      in Movies

      Amy Schumer, Regina Hall and Wanda Sykes Full Oscars Monologue

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      After several years without a single host, the Oscars got going Sunday night with three of them.The comic actresses Regina Hall, Amy Schumer and Wanda Sykes were not, as it turned out, the first three people viewers saw at the top of the telecast. That honor went to Venus and Serena Williams and then to Beyoncé, who offered a performance of the Oscar-nominated song “Be Alive,” from “King Richard.”But soon after, the three hosts emerged, with a little help from DJ Khaled, who introduced them.“This year, the academy hired three women to host because its cheaper than hiring one man,” Schumer said.Her quip was among the first of several in an opening monologue that toggled between all three women. It was a fast-paced avalanche of witty snipes, rapid-fire roasts and a sprinkle of Hollywood pomp and circumstance as the hosts began their evening-long quest to reverse the Oscars rating slide. Among their early targets were the length of “Power of the Dog,” Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill and the Golden Globes.It had not been entirely clear before the show began how the three hosts would share time and responsibilities. At a news conference on Thursday, Hall and Sykes said that all three would be onstage together to open the show and that at other points in the program, they would split up.“It might be one of us, it might be two of us, we all might be drunk, so it might be nobody,” Sykes said. “We all get our moment together, and we get our moments alone.”Sykes also said she did not want to fire off meanspirited jokes, but in an interview with The New York Times later Thursday, added that nothing was off-limits.The opening minutes of the telecast Sunday offered some early hints at their approach, suggesting that each of the hosts would enjoy solo time in which they play to their professional strengths and personal brands.Schumer, a self-professed “meanspirited” comedian, returned to the stage by herself after the opening three-person monologue and fired off a scathing one of her own. (Among the people and movies she jabbed at: Aaron Sorkin, Nicole Kidman, and “King Richard.”Hall later called up male actors up to the stage for so called emergency Covid tests and joked about her need to swab and inspect them.Here’s what Hall, Schumer and Sykes had to say in the opening monologue.Regina Hall: We are here at the Oscars.Wanda Sykes: That’s right. Where movie lovers unite and watch TV.Amy Schumer: This year, the academy hired three women to host because it’s cheaper than hiring one man.Hall: But I’m still excited to be hosting, representing Black women who are standing proud.Sykes: Yes, and living out loud.Schumer: Yes, yes. And I am representing unbearable white women who call the cops when you get a little too loud.Hall: You know, we’ve been dealing with Covid for two years. It’s been really hard on people.Schumer: Yeah. I mean, just look at Timothée Chalamet.Sykes: Oh God. What happened?Schumer: I don’t know. It’s not good. It’s not good.Hall: You know what? I’d still smash.Schumer: As many of you know, a decision was made to present some behind-the-scenes awards in the first hour.Sykes: It was a controversial and difficult decision, but you know, I think we’ve moved on. [Lights flicker.]Hall: Uh-oh, wait a minute.Sykes: Look, we’re all union.Schumer: It’s not our decision.Sykes: You know, there was a lot of snubs this year. Rachel Zegler for “West Side Story.” Jennifer Hudson for “Respect.” And Lady Gaga and Jared Leto for “House of Random Accents.”Schumer: This is kind of sad; you know what’s in the In Memoriam package this year? The Golden Globes. They didn’t have any Black people. They didn’t have any Black members. They had to go.Hall: You know, I was very disappointed that “Space Jam” 2 did not get nominated in the special effects category for that hairline they gave LeBron James.Sykes: Oh my god, amazing.Hall: It was really good. It was really good.Sykes: Black Twitter is going to love that one.Hall: I think so.Schumer: Yeah, what is that?Hall and Sykes: No no, not for you, not for you.Schumer: OK, I’ll stay away.Hall: You know, this year we saw a frightening display of how toxic masculinity turns into cruelty towards women and children.Sykes: Damn that Mitch McConnell.Hall: I know. I know. But, you know, I was actually talking about “The Power of the Dog.”Sykes: Oh, yes. You know, I watched that movie three times, and I’m halfway through it.Schumer: You’re at the best part. The best.Hall: One more week, and you’re in there.Sykes: Stay with it.Schumer: Stay with it.Hall: You know, Samuel L. Jackson is here. Yes, there he is. He just got the Governor’s Award for his lifetime body of work.Sykes: Eh!Schumer: Did You just “eh” Samuel L. Jackson?Sykes: I mean, I love him. You know, he’s my guy. But I’ll be honest, there’s a few holes in his résumé. No, for real. Like where’s the Sam Jackson rom-com? Like where’s Sam Jackson and Jennifer Lewis in “When This Mo-fo Met That Mo-fo,” you know, or the sequel “Bitch, I said I love you.”Schumer: He likes that. He likes it. [Looking at Jackson.]Hall: And where’s his musical? “Rent”! “Ho, I Said Where’s My Rent”!Schumer: I’d stream that. I’d stream it.Sykes: Well, we’re going to have a great night tonight. And for you people in Florida, we’re going to have a gay night.Together: Gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay.Sykes: We’re your Oscar hosts. I’m Wanda Sykes.Schumer: I’m Amy Schumer.Hall: And I’m single.Sykes: Oh, boy.Schumer: Regina, I mean, it’s not the time for that. And providing the soundtrack for the next hour, give it up for the incomparable D-Nice.Together: Welcome, everybody, to the Oscars!Nancy Coleman More

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      Wanda Sykes, Amy Schumer and Regina Hall to Host the Oscars

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      The comic actresses are in final talks for the job, which the producer Will Packer is adding back to the ceremony. The event had been hostless for the past three years.Wanda Sykes, left, Amy Schumer and Regina Hall are in final negotiations. Photographs by Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images; Jamie Mccarthy/Getty Images; Jerod Harris/Getty Images The Oscars, seeking cultural relevance again after last year’s ceremony hit record low ratings, have a host again. Three, in fact.Amy Schumer, Regina Hall and Wanda Sykes are in final negotiations to host the 94th Academy Awards next month, according to six sources with knowledge of the discussions. The three comic actresses come to the gig with varying levels of expertise, including stints hosting the MTV Movie Awards (Schumer in 2015) and the BET Awards (Hall in 2019). Sykes also had her own talk show, which ran from 2009 to 2010, and has hosted ceremonies including the GLAAD Media Awards. The news was reported earlier by Variety.Will Packer, who was hired in October to produce the Oscars telecast, explored several unconventional ideas for structuring the show, including the option to pair two hosts for each hour. Until this weekend, Packer was also in discussions to add the actor Jon Hamm as a fourth Oscars host, and invitations were also extended to previous hosts, including Chris Rock and Steve Martin. Martin was pursued for the role alongside his “Only Murders in the Building” co-stars Selena Gomez and Martin Short. But that plan was scuttled because of scheduling conflicts.Schumer, Hall and Sykes will be taking on one of the most high-profile jobs in town, and also one of the most scrutinized. Hosting the ceremony was once viewed as a feather in the cap by top comedians like Billy Crystal and Whoopi Goldberg. But the Oscars have gone hostless for the last three years, which began as a matter of expediency when Kevin Hart dropped out of the 2019 ceremony after refusing to apologize for jokes and tweets that were considered homophobic.Since then, the academy has instead asked stars simply to open the show, including the comic trio of Tina Fey, Amy Poehler and Maya Rudolph at the 2019 Oscars, as well as Regina King, who delivered an earnest monologue at the top of last year’s ceremony. Those kickoff positions have proved easier to book, since many stars are still leery about the time commitment and potential backlash that a solo hosting gig can bring. But without a host, there are fewer opportunities for the show to produce viral, talked-about moments like the star-packed selfie taken by the host Ellen DeGeneres in 2014.And in an era when television ratings are dwindling, the Oscars need all the buzz they can get: This year’s show is viewed as a make-or-break moment by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the group that votes on the Oscars and recently opened a pricey museum in Los Angeles. After last year’s edition pulled record-low ratings, the academy has sought new ways to draw eyeballs, including a contest letting viewers vote on their favorite film of the year. That winner, which will be announced on the telecast, provides a potential berth for blockbusters like “Spider-Man: No Way Home” that failed to make the best-picture race when the nominations were unveiled last week.The academy is set to officially announce the hosts Tuesday on “Good Morning America.” The 94th Academy Awards will be held on March 27.Brooks Barnes More