Emma Stone’s Dress and Christopher Nolan’s Dumbbells

Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan joked about using his two Oscars as dumbbells, Emma Stone blamed Ryan Gosling for her wardrobe malfunction and Billie Eilish reminisced about feeling like a failure at the tender age of 12.

Backstage at the Oscars on Sunday was largely a lighthearted affair where some of the night’s winners appeared on a stage, took a few questions from a room full of well-fed reporters then quickly fled back to their assigned seats inside the Dolby Theatre in California or perhaps off to one of the myriad of after-parties.

Stone, who won Best Actress for her role in Poor Things, had already said on the main stage during her acceptance speech that she split her dress down the back, thus a reporter backstage pressed her for details.

“They sewed me back in, right when I came back,” she said while showing off her fixed gown, before explaining why it was in need of repair in the first place—Gosling’s musical rendition of a song from Barbie.

“I genuinely think I busted it during, ‘I’m Just Ken.’ That number blew my mind. I was going for it, and things just happened,” she said.

As for Nolan, he took home two Oscar statuettes, one for Best Director and another for Best Picture, thus when he was asked what it meant to him, he joked: “It means I can do curls; they’re very heavy.”

But it wasn’t all fun and games, as Nolan was also asked about the overall message of a movie about the creation of the atomic bomb.

“I don’t like to speak to specific messages because I feel that in cinema if it’s didactic, it tends not to work dramatically so well,” Nolan said.

He also recounted that his teenage son had his doubts about him making the movie, given that young people weren’t interested in such things, but the director pressed on due to the importance of the history of such weaponry.

“The thing that I would like to point out is the film ends on what I consider a dramatically necessary moment of despair,” Nolan said. “It’s very important that rather than despair in reality, people are looking at advocacy; they’re supporting organizations who are working to pressure politicians and leaders to reduce the number of nuclear weapons on our planet.”

Eilish, who shared the Oscar for Best Original Song with her brother Finneas O’Connell, the two of whom created the Barbie hit, “What Was I Made For?” was asked for her advice to young people looking for success in the entertainment business—given she’s 22 and her brother is 26, and that they also won in the same category in 2022.

“I want everyone to be doing something that they feel passionate about and they feel proud of,” she said before launching into an anecdote that seemed a bit ironic given she has two Oscars at such a young age.

“I remember being 12 and seeing Matilda the Musical and sobbing my eyes out because I was like, ‘Damn, I’m a failure. I don’t even have a career.'”

She elicited laughter from the room of reporters who weren’t quite sure if she was serious or not.

“I’m never going to amount to anything because I’m not Matilda. I would just say, give yourself some time and do what you love. I know that’s kind of easier said than done because some of us don’t really know what we love,” Eilish said.

Cillian Murphy, who won Best Actor for playing J. Robert Oppenheimer in Oppenheimer, said backstage that he’d be “very content” if it’s the role he’s remembered for throughout the rest of his career, even though the Irish actor is 47 years old and presumably has decades of roles ahead of him.

“I mean, you know, you’ve got to move forward, but this has been a huge, huge moment for me,” he said.

Murphy then launched into an anecdote about Nolan: “I did a screen test for him when I was a kid and I thought that would be it, and it would just be enough to be in a room with Chris for a couple of hours and, here we are. I’m just so humbled and thankful.”