After a jam-packed awards season, it’s almost time for the Oscars.
If you stay up all night to keep up with the Academy Awards and watch a some of our favourite A-listers as they swish down the red carpet in their finery, you’re not alone. According to Variety, 19.5 million people watched the 2024 ceremony.
Have you ever wondered, though, how the seats are arranged? Stay with us here.
Of course, the prestigious event is skillfully filmed with stunning shots of the audience taken throughout the ceremony. So iconic, in fact, that we have endless memes that have surfaced as a result of them – Nicole Kidman clapping, anyone?
The seats at the Oscars are very specifically organised
Speaking on podcast The Rest Is Entertainment, host Marina Hyde revealed that previously, seating arrangements at the Oscars have been “fraught with danger and politics”.
Marina spoke of Otto Spoerri, who was once considered to be the most powerful person in Hollywood as he oversaw the Academy’s accounting department for over 20 years. Crucially, he was also in charge of seating arrangements on the biggest night in the showbiz calendar.
“The first year he [arranged seating], he put some people he didn’t realise had [previously] had a relationship together”, Marina claimed, which made Otto realise he had to do his homework moving forward.
Marina went on to say: “The most important thing to consider with Oscars is that it is a TV event. It is entirely made for television and it has to be a show.
“So, if you’ve got someone in the wrong place and they’ve gotta do a 25-second walk to the podium - and you have a few of those – the producers are tearing their hair out because it takes so long.”
Maroina added that while actors that are nominated need to sit near the front, there are also hundreds of seat fillers for the times that they have to go to the toilet, or leave for another reason, because “you can’t have empty seats at the Oscars”.
Additionally, according to Newsweek: “While Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre offers over chunks of its 3,300 seats to prominent Academy members and behind-the-scenes power players, the front rows from where the stars laugh (and cringe) their way through the show are usually reserved for the most famous of the ceremony’s participants.”
As for the studios themselves? Newsweek added: “There are also blocks of seating reserved for ABC, which broadcasts the show, telecast sponsors, such dignitaries as local politicians, Academy Museum Of Motion Pictures donors, accountants, the media, and the production and legal teams.
“Movie studio executives also get designated seating among the well-heeled crowd.”
No sitting next to your bestie if they’re not impressive enough, then.