ABC execs wanted naked John Cena to have bigger envelope

Academy Awards host Jimmy Kimmel dished on the naked truth behind John Cena’s “nude” 2024 Oscars skit — and said ABC execs were “terrified” over the idea.

In his “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” monologue Monday night, the 96th Academy Awards host gave a post-mortem on the previous night’s ceremony, in which Cena, 46, memorably appeared onstage — with nothing but a strategically placed envelope covering his private parts — to present the award for Best Costume.

It was an homage of sorts to the incident 50 years earlier, at the 1974 Oscars, when a naked streaker ran out on stage behind David Niven on live television.

“Getting this on the air … of all the times I’ve hosted the Oscars or the Emmys or anything, no comedy bit has ever received more scrutiny than this,” Kimmel, 56, said in his monologue.

“There were meetings and site meetings, emails and texts and phone calls and people sweating,” he continued. “Somebody was crying. Then once they realized we weren’t going to take no for an answer … there were intense discussions about the size of the envelope …. whether we needed to Velcro it to John’s body and we had to fill his crack and have socks … various testicalia was discussed.”

“They kept demanding we make the envelope bigger and bigger.”

Kimmel then flashed the much-larger envelope that ABC officials wanted Cena to use (basically the size of a box). But Kimmel and his team opted for the smaller envelope, which Cena held closely to his body so nothing could be seen.

“I’d say congratulations John Cena,” Kimmel said. “The commotion you caused. Very rarely does an idea literally push the envelope and this one did.”

He explained how they “taped everything down” and glued everything in place and said that when it came time for Cena to walk out on stage “the executives were terrified.”

He then flashed to the famously intense photo of then-President Barack Obama and staff members and generals watching the killing of Osama Bin Laden in 2011 in the White House Situation Room.

Kimmel also mentioned that he was “tickled the most” by the way presenter Arnold Schwarzenegger pronounced the word “Godzilla” — “it’s like half ‘Godzilla, half ‘lasagna,’” he said — and that he enjoyed Ryan Gosling’s megawatt performance of Barbie’s “I’m Just Ken.”

Sunday’s Oscars snared 19.5 million viewers on ABC, up 4 percent from last year (18.8 million). The ceremony started at 7 p.m., an hour earlier than usual, which might have helped grab more eyeballs.

It was the most-watched awards ceremony since ABC’s coverage of the 2020 Oscars.

The March 10 ceremony also generated the most online activity for the night, with nearly 29 million social media interactions, according to ABC.