To present Best Costume Design at the Oscars on Sunday, Best Actress nominee Melissa McCarthy hilariously channeled bunny-loving Queen Anne from “The Favourite.”
She had several stuffed rabbits on her train, a bunny on her hat and a rabbit puppet. Her copresenter, Bryan Tyree Henry of “If Beale Street Could Talk” and “Widows,” paid homage to both “The Favourite” and “Black Panther.” (Ruth E. Carter won her first Oscar for her amazing afro-futuristic designs in the Marvel film.)
If you haven’t seen “The Favourite,” yet (and you should), Queen Anne (Olivia Colmnan) keeps 17 pet rabbits to make up for all the children she’s lost.
McCarthy was nominated for her role as author Lee Israel in “Can You Ever Forgive Me.” While she went home without an Oscar, her kitty costar in the film won the Moviepaws Cat Actor of the Year.
In “Widows” (which sadly received no Oscar nominations), Henry menaced Viola Davis’s adorable Westie in a tense scene that also made the 2018 Moviepaws Awards list.
Slate has the whole story of how they whipped up the costumes, which actually paid tribute to all the Best Costume Design nominees, at the last minute, including 52 stuffed bunnies:
Katja Cahill: It was, I want to say, 52 bunnies in 48 hours. Donna Gigliotti, who produced the show, came to me. She said, “I met with Melissa [McCarthy] at a luncheon, she has this amazing idea. … She said, “I loved ‘The Favourite.’ I want to do the Queen Anne cloak. I want bunnies trailing behind me, just over-the-top, wild.’ I think she actually talked to Sandy Powell, who was the designer on that movie specifically and said, “We have this idea, would you be offended?” And [Powell] said, “Oh my God, no, go do it.”