Ramin Setoodeh

You know, it's really interesting because we'll go back and forth and a lot of the teams and publicists around award season, because it's now like running a presidential campaign, right?

Winning an Oscar.

There's a lot of consultants and a lot of strategists, and they always try to come up with a pairing that's often very safe and kind of boring.

And so my job as an editor is to try to find the most interesting, surprising, dynamic pairing.

And I usually get what I want, but there's a lot of going back and forth.

And sometimes the actors don't even know what their teams are suggesting for them.

But I really want the best possible pairing to make everyone on the

This honestly happens for almost every single pairing.

Last year, there was a very famous story about Sebastian Stan from The Apprentice.

No one would pair with him because they didn't want to talk about him playing Donald Trump.

And so, you know, there's a lot of pushback behind the scenes, and I don't necessarily want to air all the secrets of actors on actors.

Maybe one day I will, but not today.

But it is it takes a lot to get the right pairing and it takes a lot of negotiating and talking.

And I really, for example, wanted Dwayne Johnson to talk to Brendan Fraser this year because they started together in the mummy.

And that wasn't an immediate yes.

And it took a lot of going back and forth to make sure that the two of them could come together.

The other thing that happens is every single actor, initially, they always say, I want to pair with Meryl Streep or Leonardo DiCaprio or sometimes Daniel Day-Lewis.

And sometimes the actors aren't even known, I think, by Meryl Streep or Daniel Day-Lewis.

So I have to get expectations in order, too.

So we send the actors suggested questions and we print them out and we give it to them the day that they arrive.