Neil Patrick Harris had fun hosting the Oscars. He was clearly comfortable, stripping down to his skivvies, roaming through the crowd making chipper banter. Did it work? Should Harris read critics at the LA Times or the Hollywood Reporter to see if his near nudity was a smash or a dud? Not in 2015. The host went direct to the people, surveying the reactions on social media. Because that’s what counts–“what people thought landed and didn’t.”
Harris claims not to have followed the online response “obsessively”, but he was still able to read the writing on the (Facebook) wall. Harris told the Huffpost: “It’s a beast. [Hosting] was fun to check off the list, but for the amount of time spent and the understandable opinionated response…” Yup, that opinionated response–that’s on Twitter, et al. NPH saw what people were saying and that’s enough for him. He has plenty of other gigs. “I don’t know that it’s a delightful balance to do every year or even again,” he said of his Oscar turn. He’d rather try to win one.
