Seth MacFarlane Oscars 2014 Host? He Insists, Again, It's A No
Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane took to Twitter to reiterate - for the third time - that he will not be hosting the Oscars again next year.
Executive producers of this year's event, Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, have signed up to work on the show next year as well, leading to some speculation MacFarlane would be joining them. However, MacFarlane tried to assuage the fears of his critics in a pair of tweets sent Monday afternoon.
"Traumatized critics exhale: I'm unable to do the Oscars again," MacFarlane wrote. "Tried to make it work schedule-wise, but I need sleep. However, I highly recommend the job, as Zadan and Meron are two of the most talented producers in the business,"
He ended with his own suggestion as to a 2014 host: Joaquin Phoenix.
MacFarlane previously insisted it his hosting gig was a one-shot-deal even before the ceremony occurred. In the February 24th print edition of Entertainment Weekly, he proclaimed that the time commitment for creating the ceremony alone would not allow him to do it again.
"It will have been almost six months that I'm working on this," he said. "And I'm still going to get savaged in the press."
MacFarlane's hosting duties did prove controversial to what seemed like everyone other than fans of his programs; bits such as him singing We Saw Your Boobs! drew the ire of many critics. Richard Lawson of The Atlantic questioned why MacFarlane was hired for the gig in the first place.
"The oddness of the hire - middlebrow frat-boy hero emcees Hollywood's glitziest night - was only heightened by MacFarlane's unpleasant demeanor," Lawson wrote in a piece entitled Seth MacFarlane's Obnoxious Oscars.
Even the more positive reviews were tempered in their praise.
Huffington Post writer Michael Russnow wrote that when MacFarlane played things straight, "he was great - poised, handsome and charming. But on occasion he spewed classless material, which I'm sure he thought was very funny."
After the rather polarizing response he received at this year's ceremony, MacFarlane also stated that he would not be back, though he acknowledged that he did enjoy working on it.
"No way," he tweeted explicitly days after the February ceremony. "Lotta fun to have done it, though."
