Every Host and Monologue From the 2025 Awards Season

The road to awards-show glory is paved with strategic hobnobbing, endless press obligations, and a healthy supply of comedic monologues. Before award contenders find out whether they’ll be rewarded for their campaigning art, they must clear one final hurdle: sitting patiently through a host’s jokes while looming cameras threaten to cut to them at any time. Not all awards shows begin this way; some don’t even have hosts. But when they do, opening monologues can be the best or worst part of a given ceremony. They can set the tone for a delightful evening to come, cast a dark shadow over the proceedings, give birth to viral sound bites, spark spirited debates, and more. With Conan O’Brien set to make his Oscars hosting debut on March 2, here is a collection of all the opening monologues from this year’s film and television awards season available to watch online (Judd Apatow’s February 8 monologue at the Directors Guild of America Awards is presently unavailable) so you can gauge how O’Brien’s performance stacks up.

Nikki Glaser’s role as host of the 2025 Golden Globes was enviable. All she had to do was turn in a more competent monologue than Jo Koy did in 2024 — a low bar given how the comic’s performance was universally reviled — and her hosting turn would have been considered a success. But not one to coast, Glaser workshopped her monologue meticulously in writers’ rooms and comedy clubs, and her preparation paid off. After getting herself in the audience’s good graces with a self-deprecating line (“This feels like I finally made it. I’m in a room full of producers at the Beverly Hilton hotel, and this time all of my clothes are on”), Glaser covered a shocking amount of ground thanks to a collection of airtight jokes. Standouts include one about Netflix’s Emilia Pérez, which she called “the most audacious, groundbreaking film to ever autoplay after Is It Cake?,” and another about the year in high-profile musicals: “At Wicked, some people complained that the movie was ruined by people singing. And at Joker 2, some people complained that the movie was ruined by the images on the screen and the sounds that accompanied them.” Her monologue was such a success that, not 24 hours later, the show’s producers announced they’d like her to return as host in 2026.

“I am your DEI host,” third-time host Chelsea Handler said at the top of her Critics Choice Awards monologue, making her the first of several awards-show hosts this year to reference the Trump administration’s dismantling of DEI efforts. In joking that she thought Sing Sing was a musical and mocking the silly-sounding names of television-streaming services, she introduced two other premises used by other awards-show monologuists this year as well (David Tennant and Roy Wood Jr., respectively). Handler proved herself a practiced hand, even if her jokes didn’t land at quite the same rate as Glaser’s. Her opening was particularly savvy; she moved effortlessly from the difficult year in Hollywood to the buzziest story in celebrity gossip. “It is important in times like these to have a distraction,” she said. “And that’s why I want to personally extend my gratitude to Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively … I’m grateful, I think we’re all grateful, and I think we’re good. I think everybody in this room — no matter whose side you’re on — we can all agree to accept that there’s probably not going to be a sequel. It ends with us.”

While Roy Wood Jr. has demonstrated during past hosting gigs that he’s perfectly comfortable setting up the pins and knocking them down, he’s at his best when he’s weaving jokes into larger themes, which is the approach he took in this year’s Writers Guild Awards opening. Rather than go the standard route of name-checking a bunch of the year’s nominees in one-liners, Wood, a second-time host, explicitly connected most of his jokes back to the country’s bleak political reality. He made jokes referencing the emerging tech oligopoly (“When you think about the power structure in this country right now, the next four years are being plotted out by maybe two or three people — or, as y’all call it, ‘a mini-room’”), and the widespread reversal of DEI initiatives was a clear through-line. “Taylor Sheridan has the formula figured out,” he said of the showrunner’s ability to get things made in this climate. “Pick a year when white people had it good, set it in Wyoming or Montana, and you’re going to get the green light! 1883: green light! 1923: green light! 1944: green light! I thought Project 2025 was a Taylor Sheridan script. That’s why I voted for it!” Another hypothetical show Wood thinks might get traction in this new political era? “The Even-Whiter Lotus.”

Like Handler and Wood, Joel Kim Booster wasted no time referencing the death of DEI in his monologue at the Writers Guild Awards. “I can rest easy knowing I did not get this job because I’m Asian,” he joked. “I got it the only way you get jobs in Hollywood now: My dad is Johnny Depp.” Unlike those comedians, he issued this reminder while shirtless. A number of awards-show hosts this season made strained attempts to rationalize holding awards ceremonies when California continues to be decimated by wildfires, but none was as successful at spinning this into a joke premise as Booster: “We have to find joy in gathering together as a community of writers lifting each other up — by lifting up one person in particular who deserves to be lifted up a little bit more than the rest of you.” Relatedly, the best moments in Booster’s monologue were not about specific nominees but the community of writers in attendance: “To reward everyone for your hard work over the last year, I got you what every writer loves the most: notes!” he joked. “Everybody, look under your chair. You will find there a random thought from a 25-year-old senior VP of development named Braden who ‘just wants you to think about it.’”

It turns out that sprinting through the audience while singing the Proclaimers’ “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” is a great way to get the energy of an awards show going, even if the song itself has next to no relevance to the occasion. This is how actor David Tennant, back for his second consecutive year hosting, chose to open the 2025 BAFTAs before jumping into an inoffensive monologue heavy on tepid puns. “I’m thrilled to see the utter commitment to brand-new talent the BAFTAs are showing tonight,” he told the audience. “You look through the nominations — so many awards could be won by a complete unknown.” Elsewhere, he wondered where a normal person could meet a Russian oligarch like the one Ani meets in Anora, then answered his own question: “Putinder.” Tennant, it seems, is every bit the father of five he is reported to be.

For a relatively minor awards show, the Film Independent Spirit Awards has a history of platforming particularly memorable monologues — including Aidy Bryant’s own last year. Bryant’s turn this go-around wasn’t quite as strong, but it also featured some of the sharpest individual jokes told during awards season this year. The comedian touched on The Brutalist’s cost-effectiveness (“Made for $10 million dollars, which works out to about one dollar per minute”), Nickel Boys’s point-of-view cinematography (“A unique filmmaking approach that was first developed by pornography”), and Sing Sing’s casting of formerly incarcerated men (“In bigger Hollywood movies, many of the actors are men who should presently be incarcerated”). Come for these jokes, stay for Bryant’s anecdote about the onscreen kiss she shared with Kieran Culkin at SNL, which is worth hitting play alone.

“I’m going to tell you why I think a lot of people are losing their minds,” Deon Cole began the bit that comprised the bulk of his opening monologue at the NAACP Image Awards. “They lack prayer.” So, naturally, the first-time host led the audience in an impromptu bit of worship to remedy this. “We want you to bless and cover our brother Kanye West, Lord,” he began. “Our musical genius went from making wonderful beats to swastika T-shirts … And while you cover him, cover his wife, too, Lord. She’s been very naked out here.” Cole proceeded to file requests for divine intervention on behalf of Candace Owens, Kirk Franklin, and Shannon Sharpe, the last of whom he joked could use God’s help to find clothes that fit (“He keeps buying up the mediums all over. There’s a bunch of eighth-grade boys with nothing!”). That his faux prayer hardly even touched on the show’s nominees didn’t prevent it whatsoever from killing.

No awards season could be complete without an earnest, Billy Crystal–style song parody, so thank you to Kristen Bell for helping Hollywood meet this quota. Rather than opt to perform a standard monologue at the SAG Awards, the Frozen star sang a parody of her song “Do You Want to Build a Snowman?,” titled “Do You Want to be an Actor?,” featuring a clip montage of attendees’ first acting performances. It was short and sweet, even if the whole thing was little more than an excuse to remind the audience that Selena Gomez’s first time booking a role was alongside Barney the dinosaur.