No, It Wasn’t Meryl Streep Pulling an I, Tonya. Here’s Why Jodie Foster Was Using Crutches at the Oscars

When Jodie Foster and Jennifer Lawrence appeared onstage at the 90th Annual Oscars on Sunday night to present the award for Best Actress, audiences were surprised to see that former Oscar winner Foster was using crutches to make her big entrance on the glitzy, bedazzled stage.

Helpfully, Lawrence asked her what was up. “She I, Tonya’ed me,” Foster joked, referencing Meryl Streep, who was seated in the front row, and the Oscar-nominated movie that hinges on Nancy Kerrigan’s infamous injury. The two went on to lightly poke fun at Streep’s vaunted Hollywood status before getting down the business of awarding the honor — to Frances McDormand for her work in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.

But of course the truth is that Streep had nothing to do with Foster’s need for crutches. Instead, Foster was injured after she took a fall while skiing earlier, as Entertainment Weekly confirmed with her publicist. (Perhaps she was a little too inspired by Mikaela Shiffrin and Lindsey Vonn’s Olympic runs?) The Streep joke just made for much better onstage banter.

In any case, props to Foster for handling her injury with humor and grace, even matching her blazer-and-pants combo with her sharp black-and-white crutches. Hopefully she’ll be back to hitting the slopes in no time.