2021 Oscars: Joker Star Joaquin Phoenix Wore Same Suit As Last Year

It’s customary for the winners of certain categories at The Academy Awards to return the year after they’ve won to present one of the prizes for the next winner and this usually sees the Best Actor presenting the Best Actress and vice versa. The 2021 Oscars however did things very differently, in more ways than one, and part of their decision making resulted in the Best Actor award being presented last rather than Best Picture. Rather than having Renée Zellweger (last year’s winner for Judy) present the Best Actor award, none other than Joker’s Joaquin Phoenix announced the award and the abrupt ending of the show wasn’t the only thing fans noticed.

As pointed out by Entertainment Tonight and many fans online, Phoenix was clearly wearing the exact same outfit as he was at last year’s ceremony, where he was awarded the Best Actor Oscar for the DC Comics movie. Phoenix didn’t appear on the red carpet for the event so his style wasn’t noticed until the very end of the broadcast, but if you recall his messaging from the Awards circuit last year it actually makes sense. The actor wore his Stella McCartney suit not only to the Academy Awards last year but every other awards ceremony that he attended in 2020, noting he made that decision to “reduce waste,” and he kept it going this year to boot.

Phoenix announcing Best Actor as the final category seemed for many viewers to be the producers setting up a celebration of the late Chadwick Boseman, the presumed frontrunner for the prize, as the note to end the entire broadcast. Naturally it was a major shock for everyone watching when Boseman didn’t win but then when the victor, Anthony Hopkins, wasn’t even present to accept the award.

“It was not meant to end on somebody who was not present,” ABC’s Rob Mills, executive VP of unscripted and alternative entertainment at Walt Disney Television told Variety. “It was a calculated risk, that I think still paid off because everybody was talking about it. Similarly, nobody wants the wrong envelope to happen, like it did three years ago, but everyone was talking about it. I think some people thought maybe they missed some awards. ‘Why is best picture early?’ or, ‘What’s happening, this is crazy,’ almost like, ‘How can this possibly happen? Best picture has to end it!’ Some people were upset, some people loved it and that was really the point that there was no apathy.”

Phoenix is attached to a couple of high-profile projects coming up including A24’s C’mon C’mon and the Ridley Scott Napoleon biopic, both of which could see him in the awards conversation once again. We’ll have to wait and see if he wears the same suit yet again.

(Cover photo by Todd Wawrychuk/A.M.P.A.S. via Getty Images)