Ellen DeGeneres set the bar very high for Neil Patrick Harris, host of Sunday's 2015 Oscars, when it comes to creating a legen...wait for it...dary Oscar moment.
While hosting the 2014 ceremony, she had snapped a selfie with several nominees and other celebrity attendees in the audience, including Bradley Cooper, Jared Leto, Angelina Jolie, Meryl Streep, Brad Pitt, Lupita Nyong'o, Channing Tatum, Kevin Spacey and Jennifer Lawrence. The photo was posted minutes later on Twitter, which was retweeted more than 1.1 million times to become the most retweeted post ever on the social network and also crashed it for several minutes.
"Here's my biggest concern: Your selfie shot was the most spectacular, successful thing," Harris told DeGeneres on an episode of The Ellen DeGeneres Show that aired on Wednesday. "It's this horrible, dark cloud above my head now. How do you beat the selfie that broke the Internet?"
"Yeah, I dunno," DeGeneres replied. "That was so lucky."
"I see that in my nightmares," Harris joked.
"But here's what you have to know. Really, you can't plan that," DeGeneres continued. "I hoped it would happen, I hoped people would jump in, so all you have to do is have a nugget of a good idea and if everybody's on board and they're playing, whatever your idea is, they're with you. That just was such a perfect fluke that happened and I was so lucky."
"It turned out to be a great thing," he said. "The selfie's in my brain so I'm going to try to do something better, I think."
Harris has plenty of hosting experience—he hosted the Emmy Awards twice, most recently in 2013, and the Tony Awards four times, also most recently in 2013. He won Emmys for all of his Tonys hosting gigs. While he doesn't have much standup experience, Harris is known for his sharp sense of humor and did bring the laughs consistently with his performances as Barney Stinson on How I Met Your Mother before the sitcom ended its nine-season run last year.
Rehearsals are intense for the Oscars. And by rehearsals, I mean me singing
into a hairbrush in front of a mirror. #Oscars2015 @TheAcademy
? Neil Patrick Harris (@ActuallyNPH) February 12, 2015Harris is working with a team of writers, several of whom have worked with him before. The list includes Paul Greenberg, who was a writer for the 2013 Emmys and The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Liz Feldman, who also wrote for the talk series, for the CBS sitcom Two Broke Girls and for the 2007 Oscars, which DeGeneres had also hosted, Dave Boone, who had written for the latter show, the 2013 Tonys and Dancing With the Stars, Paula Pell, a Saturday Night Live writer and Tim Carvell, who has written for three past Oscars ceremonies and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and currently works on Last Week Tonight With John Oliver.
Harris talked to DeGeneres about another challenge of preparing for the 2015 ceremony, including one many standup comics deal with on a regular basis.
"I'm finding that good jokes that we have, that are solid, that we think are funny and strong...then I'll watch a late-night talk show and they'll say the same joke," he said. "So that's been happening—the Grammys, Saturday Night Live...I just want everyone to stop talking until Monday!"
Harris is also a veteran stage performer and last year played the lead in the Broadway rock musical Hedwig and the Angry Itch. He will have at least one musical number at the Oscars.
DeGeneres offered Harris words of encouragement, telling him that he will have fun.
"You're such a great host," she said. "You're gonna be great."
The 2015 Oscars will air live on ABC on Sunday, Feb. 22 at 7 p.m. ET.