Credit: Youtube

They say what goes around, comes around and in the case of the Academy Awards its almost always true. Often overshadowed with controversy, nowadays it’d be hard to find any large-scale awards event that didn’t have something worth criticising – and this year, has had its fair share. Ever since Kevin Hart stepped down as host in late 2018 after homophobic tweets resurfaced, headlines have continued to flood in over a replacement. But after stepping back to 2016, it seemed that Chris Rock inadvertently predicted this all along.

Throwing it back to the actor’s 2016 opening monologue as Oscars host, the now 54-year-old delivered a humorous speech addressing #OscarsSoWhite. Listen a little closer and its possible that Rock predicted the 2019 controversy years before it happened.

Referring to people who asked Rock to quit in 2016 amidst the #OscarsSoWhite debacle, he said: “You realise if they nominated host, I wouldn’t even get this job… People are like ‘Chris you should boycott, Chris you should quit’ “, he said in his opening monologue. “I thought about quitting, I thought about it real hard, but I realised they’re going to have the Oscars anyway, they’re not going to cancel the Oscars because I quit. And the last thing I need, is to loose another job to Kevin Hart.”

While he didn’t envision the exact details three years earlier, that simple line is what could have ignited the very idea to have him on the same stage and considering it touches on a show going host-less, the whole connection is a little freaky – or maybe I’m superstitious. If anything at all, it proves that the Oscars thrives on strife.

Watch the full monologue below.