Oscar Nominees Luncheon Returns Home and Gets a Boost From Tom Cruise

thewrap.com:

It felt like old times at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Monday, as the Oscar Nominees Luncheon returned to the same room where it took place for decades after its beginnings in the 1980s.

There were actors sitting next to sound mixers and directors with production designers, a record 182 nominees taking their seats in tables across three levels of the hotel’s ballroom and a “class photo” memorializing the event.There were stars galore among the attendees, from Cate Blanchett to Ke Huy Quan, Paul Mescal to Bill Nighy, Brian Tyree Henry to Kerry Condon to the biggest movie star of all, Tom Cruise, who was in the room not as an acting nominee but as the Oscar-nominated producer of “Top Gun: Maverick.” And all of them managed to fit onto the big, multilevel riser for the photograph that serves as the event’s most notable souvenir.

In other words, the afternoon was full of everything that has been missing for a few years.Last year, in contrast, brought a tentative nominees luncheon, taking place for the first time in a larger room at the Fairmont Century Plaza hotel, with COVID tests for everybody in attendance and smaller, socially-distanced groups instead of the big class photo.The year before, the event was canceled completely because of the pandemic.And in 2020, the luncheon had been moved to the equally vast Ray Dolby Ballroom at the Hollywood and Highland Center because the accelerated Oscar schedule meant it was happening less than two weeks before that year’s Academy Awards ceremony.

The Academy didn’t want the show’s execs having to drive across town when they were already deep in preparations at the Dolby Theatre.So Monday’s event was a welcome throwback for those who remember what the Oscar Nominees Luncheon used.