Jimmy Kimmel’s wife addresses Oscars host’s pronunciation of Rihanna after fan confusion

Jimmy Kimmel Live! Executive producer Molly McNearney has revealed that her husband Jimmy Kimmel is “obsessed” with pronouncing names correctly.

During the live broadcast of the 95th Academy Awards on Sunday (March 12), the late-night host confused certain viewers when he introduced Rihanna in his opening monologue.

“Rihanna is here,” Kimmel announced, saying her name with a hard “a” — ree-ANN-uh — as opposed to the more commonly used “ree-AH-nuh.”

“It felt weird to people,” McNearney said diversity of Kimmel’s pronunciation of the Oscar-nominated singer’s nickname, clarifying that “that’s the way you pronounce Rihanna.”

“Now America knows how to pronounce its name, although they won’t. They’ll just assume Jimmy screwed up, but no, he didn’t!” she said.

“Jimmy is obsessed with getting people’s names right,” she added. “There’s a guy on the show whose job it is to find the pronunciation. We always find videos of the person saying their own name on camera.”

McNearney then remarked, “There’s a whole interview with her about it.

“Jimmy said, ‘I want to call her what she calls herself.’ And so she says it in Barbados.”

Elsewhere in the interview, McNearney told the outlet that certain Will Smith jokes were edited out of the show’s final script.

She also confirmed that the Scientology joke would also have been scrapped had Tom Cruise been present.

“We had a roughly three-minute segment of the monologue dedicated to Tom Cruise to honor him and his role in reviving the film industry,” she said, adding, “We were so disappointed when we heard about it a few days before the Oscars experienced would not be there. Jimmy loves him and really wanted to celebrate him.”

You can find The Independent‘s summary of Jimmy Kimmel’s best zingers from the ceremony here, and a full list of winners here.