Looking for more closure after the Oscars' shockingly anticlimactic ending? You'll need to head over to Anthony Hopkins' Instagram page.
The actor posted a video from Wales early on Monday to accept his Best Actor Oscar after not being there to do so during the Academy Awards' jaw-dropping conclusion. Hopkins become the oldest actor to ever win an Oscar.
"At 83 years of age, I did not expect to get this award," Hopkins said in the video. "I really didn't. I'm very grateful to the Academy, and thank you."
Hopkins isn't just being humble there, as most awards prognosticators didn't anticipate this, either. Chadwick Boseman was widely expected to posthumously win Best Actor for Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, so much so that the Oscars' producers took the unusual step of placing this award at the end of the broadcast after Best Picture was already presented. It seemed likely they were hoping to end the Oscars with an emotional tribute to Boseman, assuming he would win.
Instead, not only did Boseman lose, but the final award went to someone who wasn't even there to accept it, which was one heck of a deflating way for Hollywood's biggest night to conclude. Hopkins' agent confirmed to People he was asleep in Wales when he won the award, and he had to be woken up at 4:00 a.m. to be told about it. Hopkins' representatives had "pleaded for him" to be allowed to join the Oscars from Zoom because he didn't want to travel to participate in it in-person amid the pandemic, IndieWire reports. But producers had decided that no nominee would be permitted to Zoom into the Oscars, and, well, here we are.
Hopkins in his Instagram video paid tribute to Boseman, noting he "was taken from us far too early." Well, that might have been a nicer note to go out on during the actual Oscars, right? Brendan Morrow