Oscar producers on choosing openly gay hosts

In two of the three years that Craig Zadan and Neil Meron have produced the Academy Awards, they have chosen an openly gay person as host: Ellen DeGeneres last year and Neil Patrick Harris this year.

Zadan and Meron, longtime professional partners, are gay as well.

Is there a connection?

They say no way.

‘It never informed our decision,’ Meron tells The Advocate.

DeGeneres, who also hosted in 2007, scored the highest Oscar ratings in 14 years last year and Harris has hosted the Tony Awards four times and the Emmys twice.

Still, there are skeptics.

Recalls Meron: ‘The morning this year’s nominations were announced, we spoke to a journalist from Japan and I remember he had a look on his face that seemed to say, Is this really happening? when he pointed out that we’d had two gay hosts in successive years and asked if that was a problem.

‘I simply responded by telling him that a person’s sexuality has nothing to do with how good a host they are, and that’s the truth. Because while we’re fortunate that our choices in the past two years have been prominent members of the LGBT community — and being members of that community ourselves, there’s certain sense of pride going forward with the hosts we hired.’