The 2026 Academy Awards may be done and dusted, but the controversy surrounding its In Memoriam segment refuses to die down. The show’s producers have come under fire for leaving out several prominent names, including veteran star Dharmendra, from the televised tribute.
Broadcast executive Rob Mills, who oversees the telecast, weighed in on the criticism, defending the segment as one of the most complex and challenging aspects of putting the show together.
According to Mills, it is the Academy’s call on who ends up on the telecast, but it is hard. “I think it’s the hardest thing they possibly do. It always is hard when they are sort of villainised for this. Yes, there’s always people who are left out. Unfortunately, we’re losing more and more people, and especially, we’re losing legendary people every year, so it is probably the hardest needle to thread. I do think what they did last night might have been the best In Memoriam in the history of the Oscars,” he said.
Mills also spoke about the segment in the interview with The Wrap, admitting that conceptualising the segment is always a big task.
He said, “Robert Redford passed away before, and then when Diane Keaton passed away, and those are two monumental legends — this is in the fall. Now, the advantage we had too with the show was the producers were in place before last year’s show … so you can start planning for that now. When you lose people like that … the In Memoriam really needs to be really, really done — these are legendary names for losing. And then obviously the tragedy with Rob and Michelle Reiner was just awful. When that happened, I think that’s when they started to really think about, ‘Okay, how is this going to take shape? What are we going to do?’... It’s a big task that I think [Raj Kapoor and Katy Mullan] met the moment beautifully.”
