Cena followed Kimmel’s quip by peeking around the curtain and saying: “I changed my mind. I don’t want to do the streaker bit. I just don’t feel right about it. It’s an elegant event, you know, you should feel shame right now for suggesting such a tasteless joke.”
“The male body is not a joke!” the WWE star added.
Ultimately, Cena did inch out onto the stage to present the aforementioned award to the winner, Poor Things, his modesty protected – seemingly – only by the envelope containing the winning nomination.
Shortly following the skit, a social media post revealed that Cena was in fact wearing skin-painted underwear behind the envelope.
“He’s actually wearing skin-painted underwear,” one X user wrote. “Great job by the makeup department.”
“That’s disappointing! I say go all in! Or all out!” another added. “He probably wanted to but was told they couldn’t.
“This guy is getting out of hand,” a third wrote.
Needless to say, Cena’s ‘naked’ appearance caused quite the stir at the Dolby Theater, where the 96th Academy Awards was held, and a fair amount of people online had things to say about it to.
Though Cena himself wasn’t nominated for an Oscar this year, he did have a small part to play in the popular 2023 flick Barbie.
Interestingly, the 46-year-old recently revealed how he had been advised not to take a role in the movie prior to its wildly-successful release.
“The agency is just going on what they know,” Cena said on the Howard Stern Show a few weeks ago.”
“And what they know is: This entity, this commodity gravitates toward these things, we should stay in this lane.
“But I’m not a commodity. I’m a human being, and I operate under the construct of every opportunity is an opportunity,” he went on. “I think the perspective from an agency standpoint was: This is beneath you.”
“But also to the agency’s credit, immediately they acquiesced, and I was like: No we’re going to do it.”