‘KPop Demon Hunters’ Winners Finish Their Cut-Off Acceptance Speech Backstage: ‘A Movie Is Like a Village’

Best Original Song honorees Yu Han Lee, EJAE, and Mark Sonnenblick shared their full remarks backstage.

The team behind “KPop Demon Hunters,” this year’s Best Animated Feature, had a triumphant night at the 98th Academy Awards — even if their moment on the Dolby stage was cut a bit short. After the film’s anthemic track “Golden” won the Oscar for Best Original Song, the winners were abruptly played off before all the credited songwriters could finish their remarks about the smash-hit for Netflix.

The cutoff drew audible boos from the crowd inside the theater. That’s an increasingly familiar Oscars tradition when acceptance speeches run up against the ceremony’s strict broadcast timing, but especially poorly received when it comes to international winners whose second language is English.

Backstage in the interview room, singer/songwriter EJAE was the first to acknowledge the moment, half-joking about the sudden musical cue that cut the speech short. But it was her fellow winners, Yu Han Lee and Mark Sonnenblick, who ultimately completed the thoughts they were unable to finish onstage. Lee, who had been speaking when the orchestra began, shared first in the press room.

“I would like to thank our families, and 24, my fellow IDO members, and Teddy Park,” he said. “This is an incredible honor.” Sonnenblick followed by expanding on the musical’s collaborative spirit, shouting out his family before celebrating the “KPop Demon Hunters” cast and crew.

“Everybody who worked on this movie, all the animators, it was a real collaboration across the board,” Sonnenblick said. “It’s a movie where a part of the movie is about looking at someone that you’ve been taught to hate and to fear, and starting to trust, maybe even love them, that’s part of what the movie is about. It’s not, ‘I’m going up, up, up.’ It’s, ‘We’re going up, up, and up.’ That’s part of why we’re on stage right now, everything, this whole room is a deep collaboration.”

He continued, “The fans, too, who have loved this movie and made it what it is, and then this soundtrack, everyone else who worked on the soundtrack, everyone else who sang on the soundtrack, across the board. A movie is like a village, and we’re lucky to be up here right now. But there are so many people who have made this what it is.”