The Emmys are always the Fredo Corleone of the Hollywood award-show crime family — they want respect, but they’re lucky if they get a little pity and/or the occasional banana daiquiri. Their glitzier, glamier, and drunker sibling get them overshadowed. The 73rd Emmy Awards event was a shambles. If the entertainment scale has “Bowen Yang’s shoes” at one end, and “Dr. Phil comedy sketch” at the other, this long, dark night of the gold went off the charts all the way into “The Queen’s Gambit director reads a speech twice as long as the show.” The whole show felt like one long coffin flop.
This was the first post-pandemic Emmys, a year after Jimmy Kimmell quipped “Welcome to the Pandemmys” in an empty room. They had the chance to remind us all what we missed about old-school award-fests in-the room. Instead, it’s like they decided to remind everyone what sucked about them. You know it’s a rough night when it kicks off with Rita Wilson spitting bars on a Biz Markie classic — and that turned out to be one of the highlights. Jean Smart and Jason Sudeikis deserve better. Michaela Coel deserves better. And Bowen Yang’s shoes deserved better.
Ted Lasso, The Crown, Mare of Easttown, and (surprise) Hacks were big winners, so the event should have been a lot livelier. Cedric the Entertainer did his best as host, starting with his all-star sing-along of the Biz’s “Just a Friend.” (Lean back, Mandy Moore!) LL Cool J gave a touching tribute for his hip-hop O.G. Queens. Then, oh snap, I saw it: Catherine Zeta Jones and Michael Douglas both throwing down the bass. It was that kinda night. The Emmys were obviously ripping off the Golden Globes by cramming all these celebs at tables in a cozy little room — a clever move, given that we might never see a Globes gala again. The Globes make this even worse by making it a binge-drinking saga.
Seth Rogen summed up how a lot of us felt looking at the crowd: “There’s waaaay too many of us in this little room. What are we doing? They said this was outdoors. It’s not! They lied to us!” He gave a nervous laugh, but he sounded genuinely baffled. “We’re in a hermetically-sealed tent right now. I would not have come to this! Why is there a roof? It’s more important that we have three chandeliers than that we make sure we don’t kill Eugene Levy tonight!”
Jason Sudeikis won for Ted Lasso, to the surprise of absolutely nobody. While some of us wanted him to deliver another confused and dazed Tolstoy-quoting speech at the Golden Globes, he chose to channel a more laid-back vibe in a nice corduroy-andbow-tie outfit. When he said, “So…heck of a year,” we all felt that. He also gave a shout out to his former boss on SNL. “I want to thank Lorne, who went to take a dump right now. Perfect — oy yoy yoy.” This summarised the humanity and warmth that made his show such the highlight of an year.
Hacks was a surprise stealth champion all night, but nobody basked in the moment like the legend Jean Smart—always the designing-est woman in any room. She got one of the night’s heartiest, most affectionate ovations when she won for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series. (She was also nominated in Best Supporting Actress in Limited Series for Mare of Easttown.) She paid a moving tribute to her husband. It was an emotional moment full of drama and emotion. They naturally played her off.
Michaela Coel gave the speech of the night, after she won Best Writing for her groundbreaking and devastating work on I Will Destroy You. She delivered a powerful speech that packed so much drama and insight in a matter of minutes. She began by saying, “I just wrote a little something for writers, really” — but it was a lot more than that, and her words hit home. “Write the tale that scares you, that makes you feel uncertain. That isn’t comfortable.” Her advice to her fellow writers: “Visibility these days seems to somehow equate to success. Do not be afraid to disappear from it, from us, for a while, and see what come to you in the silence.” She dedicated her story “to every single survivor of sexual assault.” It was a powerful moment, and it made the rest of the show look even more sluggish and smug.
RuPaul had one of the night’s most touching moments, after RuPaul’s Drag Race won Best Competition Series. Ru was the Emmy’s most honored Black artist. Ru, surrounded by contestants, had a message for the home audience: “For you kids watching, you have a tribe waiting for you. We are waiting for you. Come home to Mama Ru.”
Olivia Colman, one of the best things ever to emerge from England, won for playing one of the worst. (She won an Emmy for The Crown, but she really deserved it for Peep Show.) Gillian Anderson also won for playing an even more dismal relic of British history in The Crown (Margaret Thatcher), but it’s always cool to see Anderson win anything. Especially since it’s just a few weeks after David Duchovny released his third album and dropped trou on The Chair. (The truth? You are so far out there! Josh O’Connor and Tobias Menzies also won for the Netflix show; the fact that the English monarchy has achieved its final destiny as a source of cheap amusement for Americans is a joke Henry James should have lived to see.
Hannah Waddingham and Brett Goldstein won for Ted Lasso, as did Kate Winslet, Evan Peters, and Julianne Nicholson for Mare of Easttown. John Oliver gave an immensely moving toast to Conan O’Brien and the late Norm Macdonald when he won for Last Week Tonight. Ewan McGregor made like a suave gentleman bandit picking up his prize for Halston. What about actors of color? Emmys were embarrassed to find that not one actor of color won in any acting category.
Amy Poehler got to present an award near the end, positively beaming with joy that she wasn’t hosting this fiasco. She asked a relevant question on behalf of the audience: “What time is it and how do we get out of here?” Conan O’Brien had more fun just lurking in the audience and losing than most of the winners. All night long, as soon as the show got a real dramatic moment — Jean Smart or Jason Sudeikis winning — the Emmy honchos couldn’t shut them up and play them off fast enough. What’s the point of silencing the stars to make room for comedy sketches where the punch line is “Wait, Fred Savage isn’t famous anymore?”
It all led up to the mind-blowingly dumb moment when the show stopped cold for a speech from the President of the Television Academy. It was such a self-parodic Emmy disaster, it made you wonder if that was Tim Robinson doing an I Think You Should Leave bit under the makeup, beard, and glasses. (I was expecting him to begin talking about sloppy meats. Conan, however, jumped to his feet to upstage it and asked the crowd for a standing ovation. When Conan gave a salute, that was an in-joke for the hardcore award-show junkies: He was doing Stephen Spielberg’s much-mocked salute to Bill Clinton at the 2013 Golden Globes. God bless Conan — a man who knows his junk-TV history.
Producers made the bizarre decision to read off the nominees, and then bring out the presenter, which added a minute or two of dead air to every award — a rookie mistake. It really backfired when they made Kerry Washington pause in the middle of presenting Best Supporting Actor in a Drama to do a hasty and awkward tribute to the late Michael K. Williams … right before he didn’t win for Lovecraft Country.
In Memoriam was a harder hit than usual due to the loss of so many TV icons this year. But there was something especially raw and painful about seeing Michael K. Williams in the montage, way too soon, when we all were hoping for decades of more brilliance from one of TV’s all-time greats. His spirit could have been used by the Emmys a lot more.