Matt Rogers Says Mandy Moore ‘Flipped Over Backwards’ When He Asked Her to Perform 'Only Hope' at the“ Las Culturistas ”Awards (Exclusive)
Matt Rogers Says Mandy Moore ‘Flipped Over Backwards’ When He Asked Her to Perform 'Only Hope' at the“ Las Culturistas ”Awards (Exclusive)
Desiree AnelloMon, June 29, 2026 at 3:16 PM UTC
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Bowen Yang, Mandy Moore and Matt Rogers at 'Las Culturistas' Culture AwardsCredit: Griffin Nagel/Bravo via Getty -
Matt Rogers recalls Mandy Moore flipping over backwards after he and Bowen Yang asked her if she would sing “Only Hope” from A Walk to Remember at the Las Culturista Awards
The comedian also reveals that the crazy idea came from simply trusting his “gay instincts”
“All of this stuff is just jokes I made that starts going, and I feel like I have an audience that's down to clown with me,” he says in an exclusive clip from an upcoming episode of QVC's Cart Blanche talk show
Matt Rogers is revealing how Mandy Moore reacted when he and Bowen Yang suggested she sing "Only Hope" at the 2026 Las CulturistasCulture Awards.
While speaking to John Battagliese on the upcoming June 30 episode of the Cart Blanche talk show, the comedian, 36, says that the A Walk to Remember star, 42, “flipped over backwards in her chair” when he and Yang, 35, pitched the idea for her to sing the song from her iconic 2002 romantic drama over Zoom.
“We pitch it to Mandy Moore, we're like, ‘We think we want you to perform ‘Only Hope' from Walk to Remember,' ” Rogers recalls in an exclusive clip from the episode. “She flipped over backwards in her chair. She did a pratfall like she was Lucille Ball.”
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During the awards show, which is now streaming on Peacock, Rogers and Yang began the song as an emotional duet until the Saturday Night Live alum shocked the crowd by saying, “Everyone welcome Mandy Moore,” after which the audience went absolutely wild as Moore made her way out onto the stage.
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Going on to admit that he and Yang are “lucky enough to be able to call her, I guess, a friend,” Rogers emphasizes that Moore is “very much the person you want her to be.”
Matt Rogers, Mandy Moore and Bowen Yang attend the 'Las Culturistas' Culture AwardsCredit: John Nacion/Getty
And everyone knows it because, when he told the "millennial women” in his life that Moore would be singing such an iconic song at their award show, Rogers recalls watching them “have a response like they had just been told a close friend of theirs had beaten cancer.”
As for how Rogers and Yang came up with the idea of, not only having Moore sing “Only Hope” on the show, but also having Rachel Zegler singing Addison Rae's “Fame is a Gun” in the style of Evita? The comedian chalks it all up to trusting that his “gay instincts have a fun end point.”
“I'm not just telling myself, like, ‘Oh shut up, that's just for you.' Because if I had said, ‘Oh shut up, that's just for you,' I don't think Las Culturistas would be a thing,” Rogers explains. “All of this stuff is just jokes I made that starts going, and I feel like I have an audience that's down to clown with me.”
New episodes of Cart Blanche air every other Tuesday on QVC+/HSN+.
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Source: “AOL Entertainment”
