March 2026 Pop Culture Recap
- Zoey Daniels
- 3 days ago
- 5 min read
The Oscars
The Oscars take place. One Battle After Another takes home the most awards with six. Michael B Jordan wins Best Actor in a Leading Role for Sinners, and Jessie Buckley wins Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Hamnet.
Timothée Chalamet Doesn't Care About Ballet and Opera
A clip of Timothée Chalamet saying, "I don't want to be working in ballet or opera, or, you know, things where it's like, 'Hey, keep this thing alive, even though it's like, no one cares about this anymore,'" goes viral. It seems that everyone on the internet is talking about it, and how he's wrong. Chalamet faces a lot of backlash, not only from the ballet and opera communities, but from artists across all mediums. Conan O'Brien addresses the controversy during his monologue at the Oscars, saying, "they're just mad you left out jazz."
Honestly, I don't understand why anyone cares that Chalamet isn't a fan. The numerous responses to the clip proved that ballet is well and alive, and opera is kind of there too. People definitely care, but retirees aren't on Tiktok.
Project Hail Mary
Project Hail Mary hits theatres. You should see it. It's really good.
Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally
Harry Styles releases his fourth solo album Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally. Overall, it's not my thing. I wish he had actually leaned into disco instead of electronic dance pop.
Chappell Roan's Security Guard... or Maybe Not
At a hotel in São Paulo, security guard Pascal Duvier yells at an eleven-year-old girl for looking in Chappell Roan's general direction. The girl happened to be the stepdaughter of Jorginho, a famous soccer player, who speaks about the incident on social media. Eduardo Cavaliere, the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, jumps on this opportunity to ban Roan from performing at Todo Mundo no Rio, a music festival she was never booked to perform at anyway. Chappell then takes to her Instagram story to say that she never asked Duvier to intervene, as she didn't notice the child, and possibly the most important detail: he isn't even her security guard. The girl's mother responds, saying, "I think that you have a responsibility, when you are a celebrity, to make sure, I guess, that the people that work for you and that act on your behalf are acting on your behalf," which doesn't really mean anything, as he didn't work for her. Duvier takes to Instagram to take responsibility for the incident, and says that he was there on behalf of another individual. So, where does this leave us? I don't know. This whole thing was kind of pointless.
Bridgerton Season Five Announcement
Bridgerton announces that the show's fifth season will follow Francesca and Michaela. It will be the first time a queer couple will be predominantly featured, leading to a lot of speculation on how the show, which takes place during the Regency era, but does not adhere to historical accuracy, will handle it. It seems weird that the family would be up in arms about Benedict wanting to marry a maid, but totally chill about Francesca wanting to marry a woman in like 1817.
SNL UK Premieres
The UK version of Saturday Night Live starts airing on Sky One. The first episode is hosted by Tina Fey, and a follow up is hosted by Jamie Dornan.
The White Lotus Season 4 Casting
The cast is announced for the fourth season of The White Lotus, and is set to include Kumail Nanjiani, Helena Bonham Carter, AJ Michalka, Max Greenfield, and many more.
BTS Comeback
K-pop group BTS releases ARIRANG, their first album since the members got back from their mandatory military service.
Big Arch
McDonald's CEO Chris Kempczinski goes viral for a video where he tries one of their burgers and isn't good at pretending to enjoy it. I'm not sure whose idea this video was, but it's okay to keep some people behind the scenes.
Donna Kelce is Remodelling her Modest Florida Home
"Travis & Jason Kelce’s Mom Donna Remodeling Her Modest Florida Home." is a tweet from TMZ that went viral. Donna confirmed that she was not doing an HGTV show or anything, someone at TMZ just thought that this was important enough to tweet about. This was my favourite moment of March 2026.
Connor Storrie Verison
Connor Storrie does an ad/short film for Verison. I found it very cute. See if you can guess the twist.
Olivia Rodrigo's Walls
Olivia Rodrigo spends much of March teasing her upcoming album by painting a wall a slightly lighter colour each day. It starts off with her signature purple, but eventually turns into pink with the word 'love' written on it. This causes much speculation about what the album will be named, as in the past she has gone with four letter words, but for whatever reason, no one though the album would actually be called 'love.'
KitKat Heist
Italian thieves dressed as police stole twelve tonnes of Formula 1 shaped KitKat chocolate bars off a truck. That's 413,793 individual KitKats! A spokesperson for the brand said, "Whilst we appreciate the criminals’ exceptional taste, the fact remains that cargo theft is an escalating issue for businesses of all sizes. With more sophisticated schemes being deployed on a regular basis, we have chosen to go public with our own experience in the hope that it raises awareness of an increasingly common criminal trend."
Apparently heists are back in Italy. There was also just one at an art gallery.
Chuck Norris Dies
The headline says it all. Chuck Norris died.
I honestly don't think I've ever seen anything that he's been in. I really only know him from when his political views come up, which is... yikes.
Barbie Dream Fest
Let this be a lesson to event organizers: don't rent out a huge space if you don't have enough stuff to fill it. Barbie Dream Fest was a fan event in Florida that could not deliver anything close to what it promised. It was mainly an empty warehouse with some 2D cardboard cutouts. Many on the internet compared it to Glasgow's Willy's Chocolate Experience from 2024, although there were a few important differences, one being that Dream Fest was licensed. The event was also incredibly expensive, with tickets costing up to $449 USD for a weekend pass. I'm not sure how you could spend a whole weekend there anyway. All ticket holders were eventually offered full refunds.
The Bachelorette... Actually, Never Mind
ABC pulls the new season of The Bachelorette days before it was supposed to air as a video from 2023 comes out of Taylor Frankie Paul (the bachelorette) physically abusing her former partner Dakota Mortensen. In the video, Paul is throwing metal bar stools, the third of which hit her daughter who was five-years-old at the time.
ABC stands to lose tens of millions of dollars from this, which is all deserved given that they knew about the incident before casting her. Paul was arrested for assault, criminal mischief and domestic violence in the presence of a child in and pled guilty to aggravated assault in 2023. Part of the body cam footage was featured on the first episode of Paul's other show The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. It's so frustrating that ABC knew about all this, and didn't care until the demanded they do something about it.
