A Star Is Born's makers and performers will be up for eight Academy Awards overall on Sunday, including coveted recognitions such as best actor, best actress and best song. The Cooper-Gaga vehicle arrived in theaters in 2018 as the movie musical's latest remake; its story of a male musician discovering, mentoring, romancing and then being usurped in stardom by a younger female performer originated in 1937.
Long a fan of film and song, Williams was a seemingly perfect fit for speaking to A Star Is Born's cultural and personal impact. Oscar organizers, as with the Grammy Awards before them this month, likely had layers of reasoning for asking her to appear.
"Along with inclusion, which we definitely want to embrace, the big theme of the show is about movies connecting us," lead producer Donna Gigliotti said, "not in this theater but in a big, sweeping, cultural way."
Seven other non–cinema-centric stars will address the seven other movies up for best picture, including frontrunners The Favourite and Green Book. Williams will join Kacey Musgraves, a recent Grammy winner for album of the year whose Oscars role is not yet clear, and many others as on-stage speakers during the Hollywood glam-a-thon.
A note to tennis fans not given to watching the Oscars live: Get conditioned for this show, as it tends to clock in annually just under John Isner and Nicolas Mahut's 11 epic hours at Wimbledon.
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