With all the buzz surrounding that big flub at the Oscars last night when La La Land was announced as the winner of Best Picture and it was actually Moonlight, it was easy to overlook the actual most important thing that happened: We all learned that Nicole Kidman doesn’t know how to clap her hands.
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God bless TV for capturing moments not once, but twice, when Kidman was smacking her palms together like a complete weirdo. And bless Twitter for preserving those moments forever so we can all study her clapping methodology and how it doesn’t involve her fingers at all for some reason.
Needless to say, Kidman’s inability to clap like a human had Twitter a little shook.
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Also, this unusually empathetic side of the internet was quick to offer up reasons why Kidman may have been choosing to clap that way, like this one, which actually makes a lot of sense.
Think about it. The Oscars are probably not a constant roller coaster ride of excitement. There are only, like, four categories that anyone actually cares about. Plus all those commercial breaks for us viewers at home probably means plenty of downtime for the audience, so skipping her pre-Oscars mani and just choosing to paint her nails during low points in the show is actually a pretty smart time-management trick.
Another theory? Also one that makes sense (And turned out to be right).
To be honest, I would not have thought of this. I would have smashed my fingers together in those big, honkin’ rings and suffered the consequences. In fact, that’s probably exactly what happened to Kidman earlier in the show, making her realize that clapping like she’s never had human hands before on live TV and being subsequently laughed at for days on Twitter is preferable to just clapping normally and letting her rings eat her fingers alive. And God forbid she should take the rings off, because fashion.
And now, thanks to Kidman’s appearance on the The Kyle and Jackie O Show, we know that it was because of the giant borrowed Harry Winston diamond rings she was wearing.
“It was really awkward,” she said. “I was like, ‘I wanna clap, I don’t wanna not be clapping’ — that’d be worse, right? Like ‘why isn’t Nicole clapping?'”
She continued, “So therefore I’m clapping but it was really difficult because I had a huge ring on that was not mine — but it was absolutely gorgeous — and I was terrified of damaging it.”
There you have it. Pretty understandable when you think about it, but worth being memed for all time? Maybe not.
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What do you think about Nicole Kidman’s reason for weird clapping? Tell us in the comments below.
Originally published Feb. 27, 2017. Updated March 9, 2017.
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