This year’s Academy Awards will be held safely at Union Station in Los Angeles, Oscar producers Jesse Collins, Stacey Sher and Steven Soderbergh told nominees in an email on Thursday, thewrap.com reports.
The email outlined an “intimate, in-person” show at Union Station, with additional elements from the Oscars’ usual home, the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.
It promised a show that would be safe despite the pandemic. “We are treating the event as an active movie set, with specially designed testing cadences to ensure up-to-the-minute results, including an on-site COVID safety team with PCR testing capability,” the producers wrote.
For nominees who are unable to attend the show in person, they added, a Zoom or virtual option will not be available: “We are going to great lengths to provide a safe and ENJOYABLE evening for all of you in person, as well as for all the millions of film fans around the world, and we feel the virtual thing will diminish those efforts.”
The email also asked nominees to be “briefly” interviewed for the show, and gave the kind of instructions on speeches (“READ THE ROOM”) that would normally be communicated during the nominees luncheon, which is not taking place this year.
