The Latest: Ghislaine Maxwell avoids answering questions in House deposition

Lawmakers tried Monday to interview Ghislaine Maxwell, but the former girlfriend and confidante of Jeffrey Epstein invoked her Fifth Amendment rights to avoid answering questions that would be incriminating.

Maxwell was questioned during a video call to the federal prison camp in Texas where she’s serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking. She’s come under new scrutiny as lawmakers try to investigate how Epstein, a well-connected financier, was able to sexually abuse underage girls for years.

The deposition came on the same day that the Department of Justice has begun allowing members of Congress to review unredacted files related to Epstein files, according to a letter that was sent to lawmakers. The ltter, obtained by The Associated Press, says they can come to the Justice Department with 24 hours notice and review the more than 3 million files without redactions. They can’t bring anyone with them, and can take notes but not make electronic copies.

The Latest:

Asked Monday about the offer from Maxwell’s lawyer to testify in exchange for clemency, the White House pointed to previous remarks from the president that indicated the prospect of a pardon was not on his radar.

In November, Trump said during an exchange with reporters that he had not thought about a pardon for Maxwell, who was sentenced to two decades in prison for sex trafficking.

Similarly, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that same month that a pardon is “not something he’s talking about or even thinking about at this moment in time.”

“I can assure you of that,” Leavitt said at the time.

The Justice Department is moving to drop the criminal case against President Donald Trump’s longtime ally Steve Bannon as he appeals his conviction.

Bannon served four months in prison for defying a subpoena from the House committee that investigated the attack on the U.S. Capitol.

His lawyers have argued that he wasn’t trying to willfully defy the subpoena but only wanted to avoid running afoul of executive privilege claims raised by Trump.

An appeals court upheld his contempt of Congress conviction. Bannon is now appealing to the Supreme Court.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer asked the high court Monday to toss out the appeals court decision and send the case back to a lower court where it can be dismissed.

Social media users incorrectly identified a small boy who was part of Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show on Sunday as Liam Conejo Ramos, the 5-year-old who, along with his father, was detained by immigration officials in Minnesota and held at an ICE facility in Texas.

The boy was actually Lincoln Fox Ramadan, a child actor from Costa Mesa, California, who is also 5 years old, according to his Instagram profile.

After Bad Bunny finished his song “NUEVAYoL,” cameras showed Lincoln watching Bad Bunny accepting his Grammy for album of the year last week. The artist then walks over and hands Lincoln what appears to be a Grammy.

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Images of Liam Conejo Ramos wearing a bunny hat and Spider-Man backpack surrounded by immigration officers in Minneapolis stirred outrage over the crackdown.

Their lawyer, Danielle Molliver, told the New York Times that the government was attempting to end the father’s asylum case and speed their deportation proceedings as a possibly “retaliatory” move.

But Department of Homeland Security official Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that “they are not in expedited removal,” and “there is nothing retaliatory about enforcing the nation’s immigration laws.”

The boy and his father, Adrian Conejo Arias, who originally is from Ecuador, were released from a Texas detention center on a judge’s order and returned to Minnesota. Their lawyer said he crossed the border legally using the CBP One app and that his pending asylum claim allows him to stay.

An attorney for Maxwell told lawmakers that she would be willing to testify that neither President Donald Trump nor former President Bill Clinton were culpable for wrongdoing in their relationships with Epstein, according to both Democratic and Republican lawmakers who exited a closed-door deposition with Maxwell.

Democrats argued that Maxwell’s assertion was an appeal to Trump to end her prison sentence. “It’s very clear she’s campaigning for clemency,” said Rep. Melanie Stansbury, a New Mexico Democrat.

Maxwell has been seeking to have her conviction overturned, arguing that she was wrongfully convicted. The Supreme Court rejected her appeal but she has asked a federal judge in New York to consider what her attorneys describe as “substantial new evidence” that her trial was spoiled by constitutional violations.

The Republican chair of the committee, Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, said it was “very disappointing” that Maxwell declined to participate in the deposition.

The vice president and his wife, Usha, landed Monday in Armenia — a country that no sitting U.S. vice president or president has visited before — seeking to advance a U.S.-brokered deal aimed at ending a decades-long conflict with Azerbaijan. They were greeted with a red carpet, an honor guard, and some roadside demonstrators, including one with a sign saying “Does Trump support Devils?”

The foreign ministers of both nations initialed a deal at the White House last August, but it remains unsigned by their leaders and unratified by their parliaments.

Both nations’ presidents are on Trump’s new Board of Peace, which Trump plans to convene in Washington this month.

The deal with the two former Soviet republics would create the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity, connecting Azerbaijan with its autonomous Nakhchivan exclave. The land bridge has been a sticking point in resolving a decades-long conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Claudia Sheinbaum says it’s “very interesting” that Bad Bunny’s “message was about American unity of the American continent,” noting that he named all the South and North American countries, including Mexico and Canada along with the United States. And she said she agrees with the singer’s message, that the best antidote to hate is love.

Asked at her daily news briefing if she’d like a similar performance when Mexico, the United States and Canada open this year’s World Cup, she said that’s for FIFA to decide, but that “cooperation for development must be the foundation of the American continent’s unity.”

“If we want to strengthen America, because America is all one continent, it would have to be based on cooperation and (free) trade,” she said.

Sheinbaum has navigated a delicate relationship with the Trump administration, earning his compliments while working under his repeated threats of tariffs and military intervention.

The Pentagon said Monday that U.S. military forces boarded the sanctioned oil tanker. Video posted on X with the statement showed a helicopter landing on its deck.

The Pentagon did not say whether the ship was connected to Venezuela, which faces U.S. sanctions on its oil and relies on a shadow fleet of falsely flagged tankers to smuggle crude into global supply chains. However, the Aquila II was one of at least 16 tankers that departed the Venezuelan coast last month after U.S. forces captured then-President Nicolás Maduro, said Samir Madani, co-founder of TankerTrackers.com.

The U.S. did not say it had seized the ship, which the U.S. has done previously with at least seven other sanctioned oil tankers linked to Venezuela.

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Lawmakers tried to depose the former girlfriend and confidante of Jeffrey Epstein on Monday, but she invoked 5th Amendment rights to avoid answering incriminating questions.

They spoke during a video call to the federal prison camp in Texas where she’s serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking. She’s come under new scrutiny as lawmakers try to investigate how Epstein, a well-connected financier, was able to sexually abuse underage girls for years.

“It is without precedent in modern American history,” said the American Civil Liberties Union’s Naureen Shah in Washington.

She said the idea of masked patrols seeking immigrants on city streets can leave people scared and confused about who they are encountering — which she suggested is part of the point.

“I think it’s calculated to terrify people,” she said. “I don’t think anybody viscerally feels like, OK, this is something we want to become a permanent fixture in our streets.”

There seems to be little common ground over the issue in the debate over funding Homeland Security ahead of Friday’s midnight deadline, when it faces a partial agency shutdown.

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters at the Capitol that unmasking the federal agents is a “hard red line” in the negotiations ahead.

But Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said he just can’t agree with Democrats on this point. “You know, there’s a lot of vicious people out there, and they’ll take a picture of your face, and the next thing you know, your children or your wife or your husband are being threatened at home,” he said.

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Trump said it’s hard to cheer for American Olympians who are speaking out against his administration’s policies.

Asked at a news conference at the Milan Cortina Games how they feel representing the U.S. while ICE agents are detaining immigrants back home, freestyle skier Hunter Hess replied that he had mixed emotions: “If it aligns with my moral values, I feel like I’m representing it,” Hess said. “Just because I’m wearing the flag doesn’t mean I represent everything that’s going on in the U.S.”

“Hess, a real Loser, says he doesn’t represent his Country in the current Winter Olympics. If that’s the case, he shouldn’t have tried out for the Team, and it’s too bad he’s on it,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social account.

Trump, a former reality TV star and dominant social media presence, usually is in touch with ratings and what they mean in the world of entertainment, politics and sports. But his take on Bad Bunny is off. By a lot.

Contrary to Trump’s statement suggestion that Bad Bunny has no appeal, the singer from the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico has been among the world’s most popular artists for years. He was Spotify’s most listened-to artist in 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2025, eclipsing Taylor Swift -- another frequent target of the U.S. president -- with nearly 20 billion streams last year.

Last week, he took home album of the year at the 2026 Grammys for his “Debí Tirar Más Fotos,” the first all-Spanish language album to win the top prize.

In a social media post Sunday night, the president said the Grammy-winning top-streaming megastar Bad Bunny “doesn’t represent our standards of Success, Creativity, or Excellence. Nobody understands a word this guy is saying, and the dancing is disgusting.”

Bad Bunny performed nearly entirely in Spanish, recreating his native Puerto Rico from sugar cane fields to a raucous wedding featuring Lady Gaga. And in a country where masked ICE agents are pulling people from their homes and neighborhoods, his patriotism was political:

He carried a football with “Together we are America,” written on the pigskin, and he wrapped up by leading a phalanx of dancers carrying the flags of many Latin American nations and Canada along with the Stars and Stripes, shouting “God Bless America — All of America!”

Behind him, a screen read “The only thing more powerful than hate is love,” repeating comments he made at the 2026 Grammys.

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The FBI pored over Jeffrey Epstein’s bank records and emails. It searched his homes. It spent years interviewing his victims and examining his connections to some of the world’s most influential people.

But while investigators collected ample proof that Epstein sexually abused underage girls, they found scant evidence the well-connected financier led a sex trafficking ring serving powerful men, an Associated Press review of internal Justice Department records shows.

Videos and photos seized from Epstein’s homes in New York, Florida and the Virgin Islands didn’t depict victims being abused or implicate anyone else in his crimes, a prosecutor wrote in one 2025 memo.

An examination of Epstein’s financial records, including payments he made to entities linked to influential figures in academia, finance and global diplomacy, found no connection to criminal activity, said another internal memo in 2019.

While one Epstein victim made highly public claims that he “lent her” to his rich friends, agents couldn’t confirm that and found no other victims telling a similar story, the records said.

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Beyond the car windows being smashed, people tackled on city streets — or even a little child with a floppy bunny ears snowcap detained — the images of masked federal officers has become a flashpoint in the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement operations.

Not in recent U.S. memory has an American policing operation so consistently masked its thousands of officers from the public, a development that the Department of Homeland Security believes is important to safeguard employees from online harassment. But experts warn masking serves another purpose, inciting fear in communities, and risks shattering norms, accountability and trust between the police and its citizenry.

Whether to ban the masks — or allow the masking to continue — has emerged as a central question in the debate in Congress over funding Homeland Security ahead of Friday’s midnight deadline, when it faces a partial agency shutdown.

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Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz listens as President Donald Trump speaks about TrumpRx in the South Court Auditorium in the Old Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House campus, Thursday, Feb. 5, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

A leading U.S. health official on Sunday urged people to get inoculated against the measles at a time of outbreaks across several states and as the United States is at risk of losing its measles elimination status.

“Take the vaccine, please,” said Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator whose boss has raised suspicion about the safety and importance of vaccines. “We have a solution for our problem.”

Oz, a heart surgeon, defended some recently revised federal vaccine recommendations as well as past comments from President Donald Trump and the nation’s health chief, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., about the efficacy of vaccines. From Oz, there was a clear message on the measles. “Not all illnesses are equally dangerous and not all people are equally susceptible to those illnesses,” he told CNN’s “State of the Union.” “But measles is one you should get your vaccine.”

An outbreak in South Carolina in the hundreds has surpassed the recorded case count in Texas’ 2025 outbreak, and there is also one on the Utah-Arizona border. Multiple other states have had confirmed cases this year. The outbreaks have mostly impacted children and have come as infectious disease experts warn that rising public distrust of vaccines generally may be contributing to the spread of a disease once declared eradicated by public health officials.

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A document that was included in the U.S. Department of Justice release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, photographed Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026, shows a U.S. passport renewal in 2012 and a federal booking system form from 2020 for Ghislaine Maxwell. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick)

Attorney General Pam Bondi, center, flanked by FBI Director Kash Patel, left, and Jeanine Pirro, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, appears before reporters at the Justice Department, Friday, Feb. 6, 2026, in Washington, to announce the capture of a key participant in the 2012 attack on a U.S. compound that killed four Americans in Benghazi, Libya. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Bad Bunny performs during the halftime show of Super Bowl 60 between the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots in Santa Clara, Calif., Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. (Carlos Avila Gonzalez/San Francisco Chronicle via AP)

President Donald Trump waves to the media as he walks on the South Lawn upon his arrival to the White House, Monday, Feb. 9, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

The wait in Hollywood is almost over: The 98th Academy Awards premiere at 7 p.m. Eastern/4 p.m. Pacific on Sunday.

Comedian Conan O’Brien is back for a second year to host the ceremony, held at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. It’s an Oscars race that seemed like a runaway for “One Battle After Another” but may be a close call after all, thanks to some late-season wins for “Sinners.” Other films with several nominations include “Sentimental Value,” “Marty Supreme,” “Frankenstein” and “Hamnet.”

A picture-perfect sunny afternoon greeted early arrivals at the Dolby Theatre on Sunday.

The Latest at the Academy Awards:

Police arrested one protester on Sunday who was part of a group blocking traffic near the Oscars.

Protesters wearing shirts saying, “Stop child trafficking” huddled in the middle of the road a few blocks from the Oscars. Some sat in the road while others marched and shouted, “Turn the files into trials,” in reference to the Jeffrey Epstein files, and, “Save our children not the pedos.”

Other protesters held signs related to the wars in Iran and Gaza.

After a few minutes, police broke up the blockade and ushered protesters to the sidewalks. A scrum of police forcibly removed one protester sitting in the middle of the road.

The Los Angeles Police Department said information on police response to Oscars-related incidents and arrest numbers were not yet available.

The director of “Selma” and “13th” had some advice for fellow industry professionals.

“You see the industry consolidating, companies are eating each other and becoming one big thing that are controlled by entities that may or may not believe in what you’re making,” DuVernay said.

“It’s so important to remain independent on your own money, make your own films, find your ways to get it to audiences.”

Amy Madigan is here! Oscar buzz for the “Weapons” star is bringing a defiant moment back into the spotlight.

Madigan and husband Ed Harris refused to clap for “On the Waterfront” director Elia Kazan when he received an honorary award at the 1999 Oscars.

In 1952, Kazan revealed the names of former colleagues, who participated in Communist Party activities with him, to the House Un-American Activities Committee. It was a controversial move during the Red Scare when Hollywood figures were getting blacklisted, ending the careers of hundreds.

“Yeah, there was no way we were going to do that. No way,” Madigan recently told the New York Times.

Kate Hudson, Demi Moore, Charithra Chandran and Wunmi Mosaku all have a little something in common at the Oscars: They’re wearing green.

Different shades, sure, but on the red carpet, it sure seemed to be green that was stealing the show. An early trend, for certain.

Not long after Moscow invaded Ukraine in 2022, schools in Russia were told to hold lessons and events that would promote the Kremlin’s war narrative and boost patriotism.

In the mining town of Karabash, some 1,400 kilometers (870 miles) east of Moscow, teacher Pavel Talankin was making government-mandated videos of those lessons in his school. But he also was secretly working with American filmmaker David Borenstein on what would become the documentary “Mr. Nobody Against Putin,” nominated for best documentary.

In multiple interviews after the film’s release in early 2025, Talankin said he kept filming for over two years in Karabash School No. 1, coordinating with Borenstein. He left Russia in 2024 for safety reasons, carrying copies of his footage on hard drives.

The documentary follows Talankin, his students and other teachers as they navigate Russia’s wartime ideology, imposed as part of the school curriculum. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2025 and won the BAFTA award for best documentary this year.

He will be onstage tonight performing “I Lied to You,” which is up for best original song.

“That’s what we want to do, that’s what music is supposed to do, we’re supposed to move people,” he said.

The Oscars will be saying farewell to a lot of cinema titans, and taking more time to do so.

Among them are Robert Duvall, Robert Redford, Diane Keaton and Rob Reiner.

Other talents who died in the last year include Brigitte Bardot, Val Kilmer, Michael Madsen, Terence Stamp, Diane Ladd, Sally Kirkland, Tom Stoppard and Malcolm-Jamal Warner.

Already this year, the film world has lost Catherine O’Hara, Robert Carradine, Eric Dane, James Van Der Beek and Bud Cort.

Among the foreign talents who died were Joan Plowright, Claudia Cardinale, Dharmendra, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Mohammad Bakri, Béla Tarr and Jimmy Cliff.

Given the large number of bold-faced names, producers have decided the In Memoriam segment will be longer than usual.

Assembling the segment involves deciding who gets placed in what order, choosing music and the graphic design of the names and titles, as well as where pauses are built in for the select giants of the film world.

It’s up to the academy to decide who is included, which often leads to outcries about who gets excluded.

Maggie O’Farrell, who wrote the book that was adapted into Chloé Zhao’s best picture nominee, said she knew the movie wouldn’t be a “conventional, antiseptic kind of costume drama.” One scene in particular read differently from her novel: Will’s proposal.

“They make it really funny, which I never expected it to be,” O’Farrell said.

For the first time in Oscars history, a statuette will be handed out not only to the stars but also to the person who casts them.

The inaugural casting Oscar doesn’t recognize the performance of the actors, unlike the Actor Awards’ best cast prize, which “Sinners” won earlier this month, and other comparable accolades. This award, by contrast, recognizes the behind-the-scenes creative process and collaboration by a casting director with the filmmakers to select the actors for their roles and craft a cohesive ensemble.

The nominees are Nina Gold (“Hamnet”), Jennifer Venditti (“Marty Supreme”), Cassandra Kulukundis (“One Battle After Another”), Gabriel Domingues (“The Secret Agent”) and Francine Maisler (“Sinners”). Each of the five films they worked on are also up for best picture.

The directors of the nominated Iranian documentary “Cutting Through Rocks” plan to be at the Oscars ceremony, but the woman at the center of their film won’t make it as they’d hoped.

The film, shot over many years in Iran by directors Mohammadreza Eyni and Sara Khaki, tells the story of Sara Shahverdi, who fought to loosen the grip of the patriarchy as the first woman to be elected to the council of her village.

“Due to the U.S. travel ban, along with the many ongoing circumstances in Iran, Sara Shahverdi is not able to be present at the Oscars, the directors said in an Instagram post. “We truly hoped to be together after eight years of working on this film side by side, but unfortunately, that won’t be possible.”

“Cutting Through Rocks,” which premiered at last year’s Sundance Film Festival, is nominated for best documentary feature.

The Oscars red carpet sports an naturalistic, Japan-inspired motif this year, with Japanese maple trees lining the path to the Dolby Theatre and wood slat panels adding texture to some of the walls.

The carpet itself is “red rock,” according to Academy representatives, with shades of earthy brown making it darker than the traditional bright red.

If everyone is looking a little shinier today, it’s because it is already quite toasty on the red carpet, which is only going to get more crowded.

Production people say that after two days of blazing heat during rehearsals, they were promised it would be freezing.

Ryan Coogler understands what tonight could mean for Oscar history. He’s just not dwelling on it.

Instead, on Thursday, the Oscar-nominated filmmaker was looking forward to spending one more night with his “Sinners” collaborators who helped bring the film to life.

Coogler could become the first Black filmmaker to win best director in the Academy Awards’ nearly century-long history. While speaking before the eighth annual Macro Pre-Oscars party in Los Angeles, he said he’s trying to stay present as the ceremony approaches.

“I’m just trying to enjoy the days as they come, stay present in the moment,” Coogler told The Associated Press. “When Sunday comes, man, I’m pull up and enjoy celebrating all the movies that’s being celebrated here, including our own.”

▶ Read more from the interview with the “Sinners” director

The Iranian dissident filmmaker, whose film “It Was Just an Accident” was inspired by his time as a political prisoner, is facing a yearlong prison sentence and two-year travel ban for the film.

Yet Jafar Panahi still plans to return home.

“I know where I live and under what government,” he told AP through a translator before the war broke out, something he’s reiterated to news outlets since. “I also know that such works of art come with a price that I have to pay.”

“I also have the experience of living in prison with people who are completely anonymous and unknown, and when they can go through massive pain and no one will hear about it. But as soon as something is wrong with me, the entire world knows.”

“ICE OUT” and “BE GOOD” pins have become one of this awards season’s most visible accessories.

Mark Ruffalo, Jean Smart and Ariana Grande were among the Hollywood stars donning the protest apparel at January’s Golden Globes. But organizers actually took inspiration from AIDS activists of the 1980s and 90s.

Maremoto Executive Director Jess Morales Rocketto says they followed the example of groups like ACT UP, whose red ribbons appeared at the televised 1991 Tony Awards as a sign of solidarity.

“It is supposed to intervene in a place that would otherwise be 100% about the commerce of brand deals and movie promotions,” she said of the white buttons protesting the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement.

Performances are often the most memorable parts of the Academy Awards. If you disagree it is probably because you skipped the 2024 Oscars when Ryan Gosling’s performance of “I’m Just Ken” stole the show. This year, viewers can expect some similarly entertaining moments. EJAE, Audrey Nuna and Rei Ami, the voices behind the fictional girl group HUNTR/X, will perform the massive “Golden” from the animated blockbuster “KPop Demon Hunters.” According to the Academy, the performance will feature “a fusion of traditional Korean instrumentalists and dance” as well.

That’s not all: Miles Caton and Raphael Saadiq will bring their “Sinners” hit “I Lied To You” to the Oscars stage — and will be joined by Misty Copeland, Eric Gales, Buddy Guy, Brittany Howard, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, Jayme Lawson, Li Jun Li, Bobby Rush, Shaboozey and Alice Smith for the bluesy number.

Josh Groban and the Los Angeles Master Chorale are also scheduled to appear.

Best actor:

Best supporting actor:

Best actress:

Best supporting actress:

“Sinners” is already in uncharted Oscar waters.

It has 16 Oscar nominations, two more than any other film in history. “Titanic,” “La La Land” and “All About Eve” all had 14.

“Titanic” won 11 Oscars, while “La La Land” and “All about Eve” each won six.

So, it’s reasonable to expect a somewhat sizable haul for “Sinners.” Then again, “The Turning Point” and “The Color Purple” probably felt the same way in their Oscar years. They both went 0-for-11 on Oscar night.

“Sinners” grabbed 16 of a possible 17 Oscar nominations this year. The one it didn’t get: best actress.

The record for Oscar wins is 11: “Ben-Hur” (out of 12 nominations), “Titanic” (out of 14 nominations) and “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” (which went a perfect 11-0, sweeping wins in every category that it was up for).

Lynette Howell Taylor has seen the Oscars from a few different vantage points: As a nominee, in 2019 for “A Star is Born,” as a producer of the broadcast in 2020, as a member of the film academy’s board of governors and, for the last three years, as awards chair. It’s made her first year as the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences feel like a natural transition. And one thing she is certain of is that every Oscars is unique.

“Every year is different,” Taylor said in a recent interview alongside film Academy CEO Bill Kramer. “Every season is different. Every set of movies is different. And so, the show is always different every year.”

It’s a tricky thing to both honor the people in the room while also making an entertaining show for a home audience. But behind the scenes, from returning host Conan O’Brien to the producers and Emmy-winning production design team, is a group of people who know how to dazzle a global audience.

▶ Read more from the interview

After successfully presiding over the 97th Oscars, Conan O’Brien is hosting for the second year straight. His return to the Oscars stage was announced almost a year ago. In a statement last March, he said, “The only reason I’m hosting the Oscars next year is that I want to hear Adrien Brody finish his speech.”

Showrunner and executive producer Raj Kapoor and executive producer Katy Mullan have been toiling for months putting together Sunday’s show.

“His humor, his tone, his reverence to the art form? He really cares about making this a true celebration,” Mullan said of O’Brien. “We’ve been in tears of laugher … There are so many great moments that he’s going to bring to the show.”

One of the themes of the show this year is the human touch, Kapoor said, from the set design to the packages.

“It’s really the story of how we feel this connection and how this heartbeat of cinema is unmistakably human,” Kapoor said. “Hopefully the entire show and how Conan makes you feel and all of it is like it’s all touched by human hands and human creativity.”

Liza Powel O'Brien, left, and Conan O'Brien arrive at the Oscars on Sunday, March 15, 2026, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

A general view of atmosphere inside the Oscars on Sunday, March 15, 2026, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)

People look on as workers install Oscar statues Saturday, March 14, 2026, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, in preparation for Sunday's 98th Academy Awards ceremony. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)