Conan O'Brien Appears on Good Morning America Ahead of Hosting 98th Academy Awards on March 15

With the 98th Academy Awards just days away, ABC is making sure nobody forgets who's running the show. Conan O'Brien sat down with Good Morning America on Thursday as part of the network's pre-Oscars media push, giving audiences a taste of what to expect when he takes the Dolby Theatre stage for the second consecutive year on March 15. The conversation offered a window into his preparation process, his comedic instincts for the occasion, and how he's thinking about a Hollywood year that has been — to put it diplomatically — eventful.

Why Conan Was Asked Back

The decision to bring Conan back for a second year was the Academy's clearest signal that last year's show worked. Oscars hosting has become one of the more perilous gigs in entertainment — the list of hosts who either declined to return or weren't invited back is considerably longer than the list of those who have. Conan's first outing struck a tone that managed to be genuinely funny without generating the kind of controversy that has derailed previous ceremonies. For an industry still navigating its own internal tensions, that combination of safe and actually amusing is a harder target to hit than it sounds.

Conan also brings something that more recent talk show and stand-up hosts sometimes don't: a long history of performing live in unpredictable environments. His years on late night, his touring work, and his podcast-era reinvention have kept his instincts sharp. He reads a room well, he can ad-lib when something unexpected happens, and he's comfortable with the self-deprecating register that the Oscars audience tends to respond to. That experience showed in year one, and it presumably shapes what he's planning for year two.

What the GMA Interview Revealed

The Good Morning America appearance stayed in the territory you'd expect from a pre-show promotional sit-down — light on specifics about planned bits, generous with energy and humor. Conan touched on the pressure of hosting a second time, noting that the bar is now set by his own first performance rather than against an abstract expectation. He referenced the unusual backdrop this year's ceremony takes place against, including Hollywood's ongoing recovery from the Los Angeles fires earlier in the year, which adds a layer of emotional complexity to an event that is ultimately a celebration of a difficult year for the industry.

He was characteristically self-effacing about the preparation process, though the preparation for a show of this scale is anything but casual. Oscars monologue writing typically involves teams of writers, weeks of development, and careful vetting against a landscape of what's funny versus what could land badly in an industry that is simultaneously celebrating itself and conscious of being watched by everyone outside it. Conan is experienced enough to understand that balance instinctively, but the infrastructure around a show like this is significant regardless of who's hosting.

The Year in Hollywood That Sets the Stage

The 98th Academy Awards takes place in a year when the entertainment industry has had a great deal to process. The Los Angeles wildfires in early 2026 affected the film community directly — several filmmakers and industry figures lost homes, productions were disrupted, and the annual awards season social calendar was reconfigured in recognition of the moment. The Academy moved the ceremony date and adjusted some traditions in response, and how Conan handles the emotional register of those realities alongside the ceremony's celebratory purpose is one of the more interesting challenges of the night.

Hosting an awards show in a year marked by genuine difficulty requires a specific kind of tonal intelligence — acknowledging the weight without letting it flatten an event that people have worked hard all year to celebrate. Conan has navigated those moments before, most notably in his late night work during periods of national difficulty. Whether he can bring that same calibration to the scale of a global broadcast with hundreds of millions of viewers is the performance question that makes Sunday night worth watching.

What to Expect on March 15

The ceremony airs live on ABC beginning March 15, with the red carpet coverage starting earlier in the evening. The nomination field this year includes a mix of prestige dramas, international films, and a few genuine crowd-pleasers that should keep the evening from feeling too insular. Conan's job is to hold the room together across a three-plus hour broadcast, keep the energy up during the slower stretches that every Oscars inevitably contains, and deliver enough memorable moments that the show is discussed for reasons other than awkward pauses or unscripted controversy.

Based on his GMA appearance and what we know from his first year, he's approaching it with the right combination of preparation and ease. The 98th Academy Awards is Conan's ceremony to define — and the early signs suggest he knows exactly what he's doing with it.