Jimmy Kimmel Actually Didn’t Say Rihanna’s Name Wrong at the Oscars, Despite What Some Fans Think!
Just days after Jimmy Kimmel hosted the Oscars, his talk show’s executive producer (and his wife) Molly McNearney is setting the record straight about how some viewers thought he said Rihanna’s name wrong during the show.
As it turns out, he was actually saying Rihanna’s name the proper way, which is to rhyme it with “anna” like “banana.”
“Jimmy is obsessed with pronouncing people’s names correctly,” Kimmel’s wife Molly McNearney said. “There is a guy at the show whose job is to find the pronunciations. We always find video of the person saying their own name on camera. And that is the way you pronounce Rihanna. There’s a whole interview with her about it.”
“Jimmy said, ‘I want to call her the way the name that she calls herself.’ And that’s how she says it in Barbados,” she added. “It felt funny to people. Now America knows how to pronounce her name, although they won’t. They’ll just assume Jimmy got it wrong!! But no, he did not!”