“There will always be a special place in my heart for the movie musical,” said Grease star John Travolta as he took the stage to introduce a performance at the 86th Academy Awards, “and for the songs that create their most memorable moments.” Then he got down to business. “Here to perform the Oscar-nominated, gorgeously empowering song ‘Let It Go,’ from the Oscar-winning animated movie Frozen, please welcome the wickedly talented, one and only… Adele Dazeem.”
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Who on earth is Adele Dazeem? She’s certainly not singer, actor, and Tony-winning Frozen star Idina Menzel, who had to compose herself on camera immediately after Travolta’s botched intro. “Can you even believe? We did not know what happened,” said Menzel’s on-screen sister Kristen Bell—who watched the whole fiasco from the audience in the Dolby Theater—when I spoke with all of Frozen’s main players for a 10-year-anniversary piece last fall.
But while Bell and her colleagues may have been confused, the internet was not. Moments after Travolta’s flub, his mispronunciation became, if not the night’s biggest meme—that was probably host Ellen DeGeneres’s star-studded Oscar selfie, which had a long reign as X’s most-retweeted message—then certainly its most memorable. There were parody accounts; there were Buzzfeed riffs. Even Sarah Michelle Gellar was like, What is going on here? Yet a decade later, Menzel says the whole kerfuffle was “one of the best things that’s happened in my career.”
Why? Because we just can’t let it go—and because Adele herself turns ten this March—we’ll explain in this mini oral history.
Frozen was an unlikely hit: an old-fashioned Disney musical that hoovered up over $1.3 billion globally. Much of that success can be attributed to the film’s songs—by husband and wife duo Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez—particularly the power ballad “Let It Go,” which Menzel’s tortured Elsa sings at the movie’s emotional climax. By the time the Oscars rolled around, the movie seemed primed to win in the animated feature category, while “Let It Go” was a favorite in best original song—even against Pharrell Williams’s equally ubiquitous Despicable Me 2 ditty “Happy.” There was no question that Menzel would perform at the ceremony.
Kristen Bell (Anna in Frozen): I just couldn’t believe it was happening. I was giddy the whole night. I remember feeling like a kid on Christmas. And also, being able to watch Idina perform live is really special. On stage, you just can’t take your eyes off her. I felt very Anna that night, because I was like, “I love this woman so much.” She’s on stage at the Oscars, and our whole team was screaming so loud. Because we’re like, “If anyone’s going to perform at the Oscars, it’s going to be Idina. Give the girl a mic.”
Frozen won in animated feature, a good omen. Not long after, Travolta came onstage.
Kristen Anderson-Lopez (songwriter, Frozen): We were sitting next to our agent and the now head of Disney music, Tom MacDougall, who had been in the trenches with us with all the production. It wasn’t his first time at the rodeo, so he knew how to slip a flask in. I said, “I want to keep my head clear. I want to remember this night. I may never get back to the Oscars again, so I’m keeping clearheaded.” Then, when [Travolta] went on and he said, “The wickedly talented Adele Dazeem,” we all went, “Ah!” I was like, “Hand me the flask.”
Bell: We all looked at each other, like, “What? What?”
Josh Gad (Olaf in Frozen): I had to rewind it when I got home because I was watching it live, and I was like, Wait, what just happened? It was only later that I realized that a meme had been born.
Anderson-Lopez: We knew that Idina had to go on and sing the hardest song after that. She had to be unflappable in the face of the most flappable thing that had ever happened.
Bell: I would’ve walked out and been like, “What did you just say?” Turned it into some bit or something, and then missed my entrance. But Idina is one of the most tried and true performers that exists. She knows her skill sets so well. You can’t really ruffle her.
Menzel was, of course, ruffled—but she managed not to show it as the instrumental intro for “‘Let It Go” began to play.
Idina Menzel (Elsa in Frozen): There was, I think, about eight bars before I actually had to open my mouth and sing. [She sings a few of them.] That’s four bars. [She sings a few more.]
So he says the wrong name, and then the music begins. Eight bars is probably about, I don’t know, 12 seconds. And so in 12 seconds, I thought: What the hell did he just say? Oh no. Why did he just say that? This was my big opportunity. I’ve always wanted to sing at the Oscars. Oh, shut up Idina, get over yourself. Stop pitying yourself and sing this freaking song. Oh, and sing it to Walker—that’s my son.
Menzel did, delivering a performance that earned a standing ovation from Oscar-goers including her fellow nominees Williams and Bono. Not long after, the song itself won the Oscar, cementing Lopez’s EGOT status.
Bell: She handled it like a champ. She’s pretty impenetrable as a performer because she knows herself so well, and she knows her range so well, and she has such composure when she’s performing. I don’t know if I could have done it.
Anderson-Lopez: She did it. She pulled it off. And right after that, the award was announced, and then it was just all a blur.
Though host Ellen DeGeneres made a point of correctly pronouncing Menzel’s name several times after Travolta’s butchering, Adele instantly took on a life of her own. Multiple parody Twitter accounts emerged, including one expressing gratitude for her introduction by “Jorn Tromolto.” The next day, Slate published an “Adele Dazeem Name Generator,” inviting users to see the creative pronunciation Travolta might use for their own monikers. Menzel herself tweeted about attending the ceremony but did not mention the flub.
Travolta, meanwhile, addressed the incident in a statement released two days later: “I’ve been beating myself up all day. Then I thought…what would Idina Menzel say. She’d say, Let it go, let it go! Idina is incredibly talented and I am so happy Frozen took home two Oscars Sunday night!” (“Ironically,” wrote one news outlet after receiving it, “the initial statement sent to CNN Tuesday was also somewhat distorted, containing sentence fragments and missing key phrases.”)
Evidently, Travolta and Menzel smoothed things over. The pair reunited at the 87th Oscars in 2015 to present the best original song trophy, but not until after Menzel introduced Travolta to the stage as “Glom Gazingo.” Travolta grabbed her face as he replied, “I deserve that. But you, my darling, my beautiful, my wickedly talented… Idina Menzel!”
“You got it [right]!” Menzel replied as the audience cheered.
But how did Travolta get so mixed up in the first place? He finally explained himself during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live’s 2015 post-Oscars episode.
John Travolta (Jimmy Kimmel Live, February 23, 2015): The truth is, I was expected backstage, and it was getting very close to the time I was supposed to go on, and suddenly a page—an assistant—grabbed me and said, “You’re on in a minute and 15 seconds,” or something. I said, “Really? What happened to 15 minutes?” They didn’t explain. Well, later, I found out that my actual page got stuck in an elevator and couldn’t communicate to anybody, so then the backup page came and rushed to get me. But as I get backstage, I ran into Goldie Hawn.
Now, Goldie Hawn is charismatic, sexy, beautiful. She’s got the—[he gestures toward his lips]—amazing thing. And I was starstruck. I was starstruck, hugging and loving her up, and forgetting that I have to go and do this bit. And they said, “You’re on”… They said, “Oh, by the way, we’ve changed Idina’s name to phonetic spelling.” I go, “What do you mean?” [He imitates a producer pushing him onstage:] “Go!”
So I go out there, and I get to her thing, and I thought, hmm? And in my mind, I’m going, “What is that name? I don’t know that name.” It was this phonetic spelling, but I didn’t rehearse it that way.
Travolta has not responded to a request for additional comment. Menzel, though, has addressed the incident a few times in the intervening years, saying that she’s actually grateful Travolta mispronounced her name. (And that Travolta has been exceedingly remorseful: “He’s written so many nice, apologetic emails,” Menzel told Willie Geist in 2021. “He’s sent flowers. He’s so kind. To make up for it, he would, like, fly wherever at this point, he’s so sweet.”) She told VF the same thing.
Menzel: I had a bunch of little tricks that I do when I feel like I need to focus, and that just pulled the rug out from under me. But ultimately, it was one of the best things that’s happened in my career. I think that anyone that didn’t know me at the time was like, Who is this girl they’re all talking about? And all the people that knew me were up in arms and felt bad for me. So a lot of love was sent my way, and a lot of people got to know who I was. And so actually, it was a great thing for me personally.
Gad: Poor Johnny, he was doing his best. We all have screw-ups, but God, it’s just the fact that he savored every syllable that makes it so rewatchable and so funny. It’s the line reading of “wick-ed-ly talented” that gets me every time.
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