Nick Offerman is Oscars 2025 announcer, job first held by Ronald Reagan

Nick Offerman has a prestigious new role.

The Parks and Recreation star is the official announcer of the 2025 Oscars. Offerman takes over from last year’s announcer, David Alan Grier, in a role originated by former President Ronald Reagan, who worked as an actor prior to his political career.

The Oscars used an announcer the first year the ceremony was broadcast. The 25th Academy Awards in 1953 tapped future President Reagan to announce the evening’s big winners. Back then, he was a card-carrying Screen Actors Guild member (he served twice as the labor union’s president) , and “splendid witness” for the House Un-American Activities Committee, the congressional committee deputized to investigate, identify, and ruin the careers of alleged communists who had “infiltrated” the entertainment industry after World War II.

Throughout his career as a working actor, Reagan starred in films such as Knute Rockne, All American (1940), Dark Victory (1939) with Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart, Kings Row (1942) with Ann Sheridan, The Winning Team (1952) with Doris Day, and The Killers (1964) with Lee Marvin.

At the Oscars’ first televised ceremony, Reagan’s official title was “special television commentator.” He was a natural choice, as he began his career in the early 1930s as a broadcaster on sports radio out of WHO Des Moines.

Reagan was not nominated for any awards that evening, or at any other Oscars ceremony. But on March 19, 1953, he was joined in shepherding the evening’s events at the RKO Pantages Theatre in Hollywood by figures like Walt Disney, who presented the music awards, James Stewart, who presented the art direction awards, and Olivia de Havilland, who along with Charles Brackett presented the Oscar for Best Director to John Ford, for The Quiet Man.

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Offerman joins a typically star-studded cast of presenters and performers at this year’s Oscars.

Presenters at the 2025 Oscars include Joe Alwyn, Lily-Rose Depp, Selena Gomez, Goldie Hawn, Sterling K. Brown, Willem Dafoe, Ana de Armas, Connie Nielsen, Oprah Winfrey, Halle Berry, Penélope Cruz, Elle Fanning, Whoopi Goldberg, Scarlett Johansson, John Lithgow, Amy Poehler, June Squibb, Ben Stiller, and Bowen Yang.

Last year’s acting prizewinners — Cillian Murphy, Emma Stone, Robert Downey Jr., and Da’Vine Joy Randolph — are also slated to appear, meaning a likely return to the Oscars tradition of the previous year’s winners passing the title on to the new winners of the opposite gender.

The host of the 97th Academy Awards is first-timer Conan O’Brien, who takes over for Jimmy Kimmel, the host of 2023 and 2024’s ceremonies.

“It’s hard and it’s a lot of work and [Jimmy Kimmel Live] suffers a little bit to be honest,” Kimmel said in explanation of his decision not to return last August. “When I’m focused on the Oscars, I’m less focused on the show. And I just decided I didn’t want to deal with that this year. It was just too much last year.”

The Oscars air on ABC and stream on Hulu on Sunday at 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT.