Jonathan Ross reveals his predictions for the 2026 Oscars including best actor pick because of "very showy performance"

This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.

What’s the view from your sofa?

My wife [screenwriter and producer Jane Goldman] and I mainly watch TV in bed. I know that’s terrible sleep hygiene. The view from my bed is I’m lying here, my wife’s on my left and we have a TV that rises from the foot of the bed – very grandiose. My eyeline to the TV is obstructed by the two dogs lying in front of it, and as it gets towards the end of the evening, the two cats join us to bully me into giving them their nighttime feed. If we’re watching anything with subtitles, it can be a nightmare, because there’ll always be an animal walking in front of the words.

What have you been enjoying watching from your bed?

The Pitt, which is sort of the unofficial sequel to ER. I’m already halfway through the second season, and it’s amazing. Noah Wyle is fabulous in it. I always watch Gogglebox; Steal with Sophie Turner on Prime was quite fun; and because Jane and I like to watch horror, we enjoyed Evil, which is like The X-Files, but set in the world of the Catholic Church and demonic possession.

Who controls the remote?

The person in charge is Jane, and so it should be, because I would watch any old s**t. I do “second screen” quite a bit. She gets annoyed with me and goes, “Are you actually watching this?” I go, “Yeah, no, no, I am. I’m sorry. I was checking a message from the kids.” Then she sees I’m actually watching a video of a cat falling over, which is hard to resist.

You’re hosting Handcuffed: Last Pair Standing, Channel 4’s reality series, where chalk-and-cheese people are literally handcuffed together to see if they can bear each other for two weeks. What sort of person would you least like to be handcuffed to?

Weirdly, I get on with most people. I like to think I’m fairly low maintenance. On the other hand, I think I would find being with anyone 24/7 a challenge – even my wonderful wife. One thing I hope I’ve learnt from hosting chat shows is that my opinion isn’t really what’s important. Someone will say something I disagree with, and sometimes I will try and draw them out on it more, or get to the heart of it, but even if I might think they’re wrong, I’m actually interested in finding out how they’ve arrived at that position.

Several of the contestants’ position is that Britain is broken. Do you agree with that point of view?

I think it’s easy to arrive at that view, even if I don’t believe it’s necessarily the correct one. It’s the way information is shared, the speed of exchange of information these days, and also how easy it is to find yourself, even if it wasn’t deliberate, in an echo chamber with others who think the same way. Then you see repeated back the same views, and you begin to think that that is the consensus rather than the reality. Everyone’s going to think that the roads are broken if you’re on the Facebook “potholes” group…

You’re also hosting ITV’s coverage of the Oscars. Who do you tip to win?

It’s going to be a toss-up for best picture between Sinners, which I think will probably have more traction in the States than it had here, and One Battle after Another, which I suspect it will go to. I slightly preferred Sinners because it felt like they were taking that genre-movie idea and doing something really interesting with it. One Battle after Another is solid film-making and really fun, but I don’t think it’s an important film – not that it should be.

Best actor might be Michael B Jordan, because it’s a very showy performance, but also it might be Leonardo DiCaprio’s year. I think because we all have a slight ick about his personal life, we sometimes forget he’s an amazing actor.

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Handcuffed: Last Pair Standing continues at 9pm on Mondays and Tuesdays on Channel 4. Oscars Live airs Sunday 15 March at 10:15pm on ITV1 and ITVX.

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