【Esther Moser】

There's a sexual misconduct elephant in the room on Esther MoserE!'s Oscars Live From the Red Carpet, and his name is Ryan Seacrest.

After Variety recently published a report detailing ex-E! stylist Suzie Hardy's serious harassment and assault allegations against Seacrest, the network doubled down, stating their long-time anchor would still fulfill his duties on Sunday. Awkwardness ensued, as the #MeToo and Time's Up continued to be a central topic of discussion.

The night's major stars responded to E!'s stance with a cold shoulder, simply avoiding interviews with Seacrest. Earlier in the week, actresses like Jennifer Lawrence expressed doubts about interviewing with him.

And indeed, the most talked-about celebrities of the evening were conspicuously absent from his list of interviewees. Out of the twenty people Seacrest interviewed, only two were actual Oscar nominees, with Allison Janney up for supporting actress and Christopher Plummer up for supporting actor.

But the spectre of allegations hung even over those interviews.

Seacrest asked Christopher Plummer about the difficulty of only having nine days to shoot his part in Ridley Scott's All the Money in the World. Though it was on everyone's mind, neither of the men addressed the fact that Plummer was on a time crunch because his scenes were reshoots to replace accused predator Kevin Spacey.

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Empire's Taraji P Henson gave him a very pointed smile and message, saying, "You know what, the universe has a way of taking care of the good people, you know what I mean?" Seacrest paused, before replying with a meager, "I agree."

But mostly, E! filled up time with cuts to co-anchor Gulianna Rancic's roundtable discussion, while Seacrest took what he could get.

Certainly, the #MeToo discussions on the Oscars red carpet were much more tame than at previous carpets this awards season. During the Golden Globes red carpet, Debra Messing called out E! during her E! interview about its Catt Sadler pay gap controversy.

Reportedly,this is by design. Hollywood Reporterpublished an article with unnamed sources claiming that E! was planning to run the red carpet live broadcast on a 30-second delay, in order to avoid those kind of ambushes again. These reports made it extra awkward when Rancic boasted that, "The unexpected moments happen quickly on this red carpet and you'll see them live only on E!"