International
ABC’s ‘Oscars Backstage’ to stream live on Facebook
MUMBAI: The Academy, ABC Entertainment and Facebook are partnering to make this year’s The Oscars Backstage on ‘Watch ABC’ the most “Likeable” ever. The curated “Director’s Cut” feed from The Oscars Backstage – which delivers three channels of live video feeds from over 20 cameras throughout the Dolby Theater to ‘Watch ABC’ for desktop and mobile devices – will also stream on the ABC Network’s Facebook Page and be part of the Facebook Trending Oscars experience (www.facebook.com/oscars), which gives fans one place to connect in real time as they watch the night unfold.
“We’re excited to bring viewers backstage and provide exclusive access to all those memorable, talked-about Oscar moments – the ones that happen on stage as well as the stories that play out behind-the-scenes,” said Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences chief marketing officer Christina Kounelias.
“We know that a large percentage of people – 70 per cent of tablet and smartphone owners – are on their devices while watching TV. The Oscars Backstage on ‘Watch ABC’ provides them with an unparalleled social experience around Hollywood’s biggest night. And thanks to our ongoing partnerships with MPVDs, including today’s launch of ‘Watch ABC’ with DirecTV, and this year’s arrangement with Facebook, we’re able to deliver it to more people than ever before,” said Disney/ABC Television Group EVP and chief product officer – digital media – Albert Cheng.
On the red carpet, ABC will incorporate exclusive, real-time Facebook data of the most buzzed about nominees during the pre-show. In addition, fans will be able to ask questions of their favorite nominees via the “Good Morning America” Facebook page, with the potential to see their question answered live on the red carpet.
Embeddable video clips of the most memorable moments of the awards show – including all musical performances – will be posted almost immediately after they air to Oscar.com/Video, with a selection of those also being shared on the Facebook pages. Additionally, this is the first year that The Oscars and The Oscars Backstage will stream with the recently launched ‘Watch ABC’ features “Social Lens” and “FastShare,” which provide fans with an even more personalized social experience.
This year’s The Oscars Backstage hosts and correspondents include:
• “Good Morning America’s” weekend edition co-anchor Paula Faris and Fusion network host Pedro Andrade will host “The Director Cut” feeds during both the pre-show and awards telecast.
Faris is the co-anchor of “Good Morning America’s” weekend edition, and reports across ABC News broadcasts and digital platforms. She joined ABC News in January 2012 as co-anchor of ABC News’ “World News Now” and “America This Morning.”
A Brazilian journalist originally from Rio de Janeiro, Andrade is a host of the Fusion network, which is a multi-platform media company that serves a young, diverse, and inclusive millennial generation. Fusion delivers a unique mix of news, pop culture, and satire content that is both smart and irreverent across its TV and digital platforms (fusion.net). Prior to Fusion, Andrade anchored NBC’s weekly luxury lifestyle program “LX.TV 1st Look” for 5 years.
• “Good Morning America” and ESPN contributing editor Chris Connelly is returning as the official greeter of The Oscars Red Carpet, which includes welcoming nominees, presenters and performers to the show.
• Actor Matt McGorry will be positioned in the Fan Bleachers on the Red Carpet. McGorry stars as Asher Millstone in ABC’s series “How to Get Away with Murder.” He can also be seen playing the post-military newbie corrections officer John Bennett in the Netflix original series “Orange is the New Black.”
• Nick Axelrod will serve as The Oscars Backstage fashion correspondent. Axelrod is the creator and regular host of Yahoo Style’s popular celebrity interview series, “I Yahoo’d Myself.” He is also the Co-Founder and former Editorial Director of the award-winning beauty website Into The Gloss, which was nominated for a 2014 Webby award. He has also served as Senior Fashion News Editor at ELLE, spent three years at Women’s Wear Daily (WWD), and has also contributed to publications including ELLE Accessories and The Hollywood Reporter.
• ABC News Correspondent Sara Haines will be contributing to the Backstage feed. In addition to reporting for “Good Morning America” during the week, Haines is the Pop News anchor on the weekend edition of “GMA.”
In addition to The Oscars Backstage feeds, ‘Watch ABC’ users who have verified with a participating pay TV provider in one of the eight ABC Owned markets – Chicago, Fresno, Houston, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, Raleigh-Durham and San Francisco – can also access a live feed of the Oscars preshow, full awards telecast and “Jimmy Kimmel Live: After the Oscars” as part of the regular ‘Watch ABC’ service. Live streaming is currently available through Comcast, Cablevision, Cox Communications, Charter Communications, DISH, DirecTV, Midcontinent Communications, Verizon FiOS, Google Fiber and AT&T U-verse, among others. Once aired, the full Oscars telecast will be available on demand via ‘Watch ABC’ for verified viewers for three days. ‘Watch ABC’ can be accessed from Oscar.com, ABC.com, or via the ‘Watch ABC’ app, which can be downloaded for free at Google Play and the App Store. Verified viewers then log in using their cable or satellite subscription username and password.
All ‘Watch ABC’ fans can access the new enhanced social features. Social Lens integrates fan’s personal Facebook and Twitter into the ‘Watch ABC’ app so they can socialize with their friends while they watch The Oscars – all on one device. FastShare enables fans who are watching on demand to easily access and share clips of their favorite in-show moments as they are watching.
Video highlights from the telecast and The Oscars Backstage will also be available as embeddable clips on Oscar.com/Video almost immediately as they air. Full clips of the show’s musical numbers, including performances from Neil Patrick Harris, Jennifer Hudson, Anna Kendrick, Tegan and Sara and comedy-music trio The Lonely Island, Adam Levine, Rita Ora, Tim McGraw, Lady Ga Ga, Common and John Legend, will be featured in a dedicated “Music Moments” section on Oscar.com that includes in-depth video and photo coverage of past music winners.
Oscar.com is also showcasing nominees in their own words with a collection of official nominee questionnaires, including submissions from Julianne Moore, Robert Duvall, Patricia Arquette, Keira Knightley, and John Legend, among many others. To add to the fun, insanely addicting quizzes will challenge fans knowledge of this year’s nominees. The hugely popular “My Picks” interactive ballot is also live. Friends can view and share the ballot on Facebook, which will update in real time on Oscar night, ensuring that the most competitive Oscar handicappers are instantly aware of their ranking among friends.
The 87th Oscars will be held on 22 February, 2015, at the Dolby Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center in Hollywood.
On 23 February, “LIVE with Kelly and Michael” will continue its awards season tradition with the fourth edition of “LIVE’s After Oscar Show.” The 10th annual “Jimmy Kimmel Live: After the Oscars” airs 22 February on ABC.
LOS ANGELES: Acting has never been an easy profession, but in recent years, it has acquired a new existential anxiety. Artificial intelligence can now mimic faces, clone voices and, in theory at least, speak any language it is fed. The fear that actors may soon be replaced by algorithms no longer belongs exclusively to science fiction. And yet, despite the rise of digital inauthenticity, some performers remain stubbornly resistant to replacement. The reason is not celebrity, nor even talent. It is language.
On paper, this should not be a problem. AI can translate. It can imitate accents. It can string together grammatically correct sentences in dozens of languages. But acting, inconveniently, is not about grammatical correctness. It is about meaning, and meaning is where AI still falters.
Machine translation offers a cautionary tale. Google Translate, now powered by neural AI, has improved markedly since its debut in 2006. It can manage menus, emails and airport signage with impressive efficiency. What it struggles with, however, are the moments that matter most: idioms, metaphors, irony, and cultural shorthand. Ask it to translate a joke, a threat disguised as politeness, or a line heavy with emotional subtext, and it begins to unravel. Acting lives precisely in those gaps.
This matters because film language is rarely literal. Scripts, particularly in independent cinema, rely on figurative speech and symbolism to convey what characters cannot say outright. Pedro Almodóvar’s Volver is a useful example. The film’s recurring use of red operates on multiple levels: grief, desire, repression, liberation, and memory. These meanings are inseparable from the Spanish cultural context and emotional cadence. A translation may convey the words, but not the weight they carry. An AI-generated performance might replicate the sound, but not the sense.
This is where multilingual actors gain their edge. Performers such as Penélope Cruz and Sofía Vergara do not simply switch between languages; they move between cultural logics. Their fluency allows them to inhabit characters without flattening them for international consumption. Language, for them, is not an accessory but a structuring force.
Beyond European cinema, this becomes even more pronounced. Languages such as Hindi, Arabic and Mandarin are spoken by hundreds of millions of people and underpin vast cinematic traditions. As global audiences grow more interconnected, the demand for authenticity increases rather than diminishes. Viewers can tell when a performance has been filtered through approximation. Subtle errors, misplaced emphasis, and an unnatural rhythm break the illusion.
There is also a practical dimension. Multilingualism expands opportunity. Sofía Vergara has spoken openly about how learning English enabled her to work beyond Colombia and access Hollywood roles. But this movement is not a one-way export of talent into English-speaking cinema. Multilingual actors carry stories, styles and sensibilities back with them, enriching multiple industries at once.
Cinema has always thrived on such hybridity. Denzel Washington’s performances, for instance, draw on the cultural realities of growing up African American in the United States, while also reflecting stylistic influences from classic Hollywood and Westerns. His work demonstrates how identity and influence intersect on screen. Multilingual actors extend this intersection further, embodying multiple cultural frameworks simultaneously.
At times, linguistic authenticity is not merely artistic but ethical. Films that confront historical trauma, such as Schindler’s List, rely on language to anchor their moral seriousness. When Jewish actors perform in German, the choice is not incidental. Language becomes a site of memory and confrontation. It is difficult to imagine an automated voice carrying that responsibility without hollowing it out.
This is why claims that AI heralds the death of language miss the point. Language is not just a delivery system for information. It is a repository of history, humour, power and pain. Fluency is not only about knowing what to say, but when to hesitate, when to understate, and when to let silence do the work. These are not technical problems waiting to be solved; they are human instincts shaped by lived experience.
AI may one day improve its grasp of metaphor and nuance. It may even learn to sound convincing. But acting is not about sounding convincing; it is about being convincing. Until algorithms can acquire memory, cultural inheritance and emotional intuition, multilingual actors will remain irreplaceable. AI may learn to speak. But it cannot yet learn to mean.
In an industry increasingly tempted by shortcuts, language remains stubbornly resistant to automation. And for actors who can move between worlds, linguistic, cultural, and emotional, that resistance is not a weakness, but a quiet, enduring advantage.
