Jimmy Kimmel opened the 2020 Emmy Awards with a monologue that delighted stars such as Viola Davis, Regina King, Sterling K. Brown, Debra Messing, and… Kimmel himself.
The strange opening mixed Kimmel’s monologue jokes with audience footage from awards shows of the past. As a result, many viewers were left relatively confused by the bit—even though ABC and Kimmel himself went to great lengths prior to Emmy night explaining how the ceremony would be audience-free, in order to comply with public health and safety guidelines amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“This isn’t a MAGA rally, it’s the Emmys,” Kimmel joked, after stretching the bit to its limit—and revealing that he had actually been speaking to an empty theater.
Before that big reveal, however, Kimmel’s monologue was about exactly what one might expect from an awards show emcee. “You can’t have a virus without a host,” Kimmel said as the fake crowd laughed.
“Why would you have an awards show in the middle of a pandemic?” he added. “No, seriously, why are we having an awards show in the middle of the pandemic?”
“‘Why?’ is a question I’ve been asked a lot this week and I get it,” Kimmel joked. “Yeah, it might seem frivolous and unnecessary to do this during a global pandemic… but you know what else seems frivolous and unnecessary? Doing it every other year.”
Heading into the ceremony—which Kimmel agreed to emcee last year, before the coronavirus pandemic forced ABC and the Television Academy to adjust its plans for the awards show—the host expressed mixed feelings about the lack of an audience.
“There will be no one to laugh, which is bad and also good because at least it won’t be a surprise if nobody laughs,” Kimmel told The Daily Beast.
He added, “I will not lie to you. I would rather be doing this in front of an audience. You know, the fun part of it is getting laughs from people and this is like all of the work and none of the fun.”
But Kimmel struck a more optimistic tone with Entertainment Weekly. “We’re just trying to be as creative as possible given the constraints and there are a lot of areas you can have fun with,” he said of the show. “Because everybody knows how an award show goes, but nobody really knows how it goes from a bunch of houses. So, we’re going to play with the conventions that we typically see at the Emmys and all these other awards shows, and adapt them. It’s almost like a home game version of a beloved television show. It’s like playing Wheel of Fortune in your house.”
Still, despite the venue for creativity, Kimmel said he expected viewership of Sunday’s Emmy Awards to bottom out, even after last year’s historic low ratings. “I know everyone will get crazy when I say this, but this will probably be the lowest-rated Emmys of all time,” Kimmel said to Deadline before the show. “I would bet almost anything on it. Of course it will.”
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