The 97th Oscars made history in multiple ways. Sure, thanks to Adrien Brody, it had, arguably, the longest acceptance speech in history, but it also shocked many by taking a ratings jump from 2024. A year that had the double pop culture hit of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” to fuel viewership. Perhaps it was a fresh face as emcee, Conan O’Brien, or the power of “Wicked,” but executive producers Katy Mullan and Raj Kapoor effectively knocked it out of the park. And when you can make that many stakeholders happy about an awards telecast that is often the most criticized in the world? Year after year? That’s a big, big win.

READ MORE: Conan O’Brien is officially back to host the 2026 Oscars

Earlier this month, Mullan and Kapoor jumped on a Zoom to reflect on the Emmy-worthy 2025 ceremony, how they got O’Brien to commit to returning for 2026 in less than two weeks, the relief of having a whole year to prepare for the 98th Oscars with the key creatives locked up, the 30 minute “yes” from Margaret Qualley, when Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo committed to opening the show (it was later than you might think), incorporating a tribute to the victims of the LA Wildfires, and, much, much more.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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The Playlist: Congratulations on last year’s show. You must’ve been thrilled when the ratings came in the next day.

Katy Mullan: We were, yes, we were. I mean, you never really know, and the show went long, and that’s always a real balancing act with a three and a half hour show. You really don’t want it to go any longer, but there are only so many things we have control over, so we were really hopeful that that didn’t impact the rating. So when they came in, yeah, we were thrilled, really excited.

The Playlist: I want to discuss March’s ceremony, but a year ago, I don’t even know if you guys were booked to come back yet. You may have been, but it might not have been public, and there certainly was no host. How much of a relief is it to know that with 10 months to go, you have a window that most Oscar producers dream of?

Katy Mullan: I mean, we’re going to leave it all to the last minute and not talk to Conan until probably February, just to keep the adrenaline going. [Laughs.] No, it is the biggest gift you could have as a producer, just like you said, and Raj can speak to just what a great partner Conan was. And Raj loves to start planning as soon as possible, so to have the host locked in, have this incredible team that we already have in place, who nearly all of them are back from last year, it just gives us a gargantuan headstart on ideas and creative.

Raj Kapoor: As Katy said, this year we were dating. Next year we’re in the love phase, so it’s really interesting. Katy and I had not worked with Conan before, so it’s like getting to know each other and what our strengths are and what each of us brings to the table. But it was such a lovely collaborative effort. And Conan is so gifted. He’s so warm, he’s so compassionate and intelligent. He loves, he just puts in so much effort. I think we all felt that we wanted to keep striving for excellence, and every single moment that Conan was on stage, whatever moments were happening in the show, we wanted to put our best foot forward. And Conan was such a great partner when it came to it, and we loved it sometimes where he’d only be out for a minute, but whatever he did was hilarious, and it was awesome, and it made you feel something. And yeah, we’re so excited to do it again and hopefully bigger and better, and yeah, we’ll see all the things that we learned this year, we want to keep striving to make the best show that we can.

The Playlist: Most viewers do not know that it is very hard to find someone willing to put themselves out on that global stage to host the Oscars. Where did the idea come to go to Conan, and what was his initial reaction?

Katy Mullan: I mean, it’s literally one of the hardest jobs in the show business because if you do it right, everybody loves you. But anything that doesn’t land any little moment that isn’t quite right, everybody is a critic, and you’ve got to bring yourself to it. And there’s been so many amazing hosts in Oscar’s past. It’s like the bar is so high. I mean, you’ve got the Billy Crystals, the Jimmy Kimmels, all of these incredible folks. And the shortlist of people who can do that job is very, very short. And with Conan, you just can’t believe that he hasn’t done it before. So, when his name came up and when we discussed it, we were so excited because we realized he is that rare diamond gem that can handle live TV, that can pivot in the moment, that can be warm and witty, that can handle the story of the night. And a room like that, it’s incredibly intimidating to walk out on that stage and see the biggest movie stars in the world looking back at you. And you’ve got to be able to, and I think what he did was he managed to poke fun at the industry, but do it with love and respect that we all have working on that show. So, he just found exactly the right tone. So I mean, I don’t know how long and hard he had to think about it, but when he said yes, we were literally jumping out of our chairs, excited because we just knew that he was going to do an incredible job.

The Playlist: Most people would expect he’d want some time to think it over before committing to come back. And no, that announcement came super fast. Were you surprised when you went back to him that he said yes so quickly?

Katy Mullan: We got him when he was tired and vulnerable, and we got him to sign on the dotted line. [Laughs.] And then he may well be regretting it now, but I think we just pounced on in there. So, we were really thrilled that ABC and the Academy, and everyone felt the same as we did, and just asked him back because Raj and I are his biggest fans.

The Playlist: In terms of approaching a telecast, you no doubt are seeing what some of the movies are going to be that might get nominated, that might not. When did you guys start having real conversations about what you wanted this Oscar show to be about thematically this year?

Raj Kapoor: Thematically, we probably started in June, July, just some big thinking of how we were putting the show together, what some of the visual ideas were going to be, and just some of our themes. And then it all got adapted as we got closer to the show, and then we had to deal with the fires and the impact to Los Angeles and how we were going to address it. So yeah, it’s kind of a constantly moving target. But yeah, we adapted and we go for it, but we share with our production team what our core values and themes are for that year’s show. We start to think about what we want to change and how we want people to hopefully feel when they watch the show, and how they approach their work and their moments within the show.

Katy Mullan: Just to add to that, I think one of our biggest goals going into the show was, and as we developed stuff, it was making audiences feel closer to the process. Because we are such movie fans, and when you get a little bit of insight into the incredible journey and the number of people and the incredible talent and all of the departments that it takes to make a good movie and what it really takes to make a great movie, we just tried to infuse it with as much of that behind the scenes storytelling as possible. And that was one of the core principles. It’s like this alchemy filmmaking, what does that mean? How can we show that, related to the films of the year, but also just in general, pull back the curtain and give audiences a little peek at that?