There’s the best-dressed list, and then there’s the least-dressed list. We will give you one guess which one John Cena topped at the Oscars 2024 on Sunday in Los Angeles.
They say you’re never fully dressed without a smile, and Cena did eventually sport one of those, plus Birkenstocks and an oversized envelope, when he took the stage to present the Academy Award for costume design to Poor Things costumer Holly Waddington.
In a planned bit with host Jimmy Kimmel to call back to the 50th anniversary of an onstage streaker disrupting the 1974 awards ceremony, Cena played at being too bashful to make his own nude run, explaining that “it’s an elegant event” and insisting, at Kimmel’s reminder that he “wrestles naked” that “I don’t wrestle naked, I wrestle in jorts.”
Several hilariously tentative sidesteps later, Cena and his iliac furrows made it to the mic with the envelope covering his nether regions. Backstage photos reveal that Cena was also fitted with a modesty pouch just in case, essentially turning his memorable look into some low-key Barbie cosplay. Cena’s own backstage was also covered with a flesh-colored panel. Look, he even has Weird Barbie’s signature Birkenstocks. Kenergy, indeed.
ROBERT GAUTHIER/GETTY IMAGES
ROBERT GAUTHIER/GETTY IMAGES
By the time Cena left the stage, he was wearing a very elegant makeshift toga, complete with a stylish curtain tassel belt, which Kimmel and a team of costumers helped him into while the nominee montage played. Because, as Cena noted onstage, he couldn’t open the envelope without…opening his own envelope, so to speak.
