Mariska Hargitay Opened the Emmys with Jokes, Jalen Brunson, and... a Musical Number?

2 min readAwards shows are constantly trying out new tricks to bring audiences back. We’ve seen some weird ideas recently—donation trackers that subtract money for overlong speeches, and even live Polymarket projection models that pop up on screen. But the 2026 Emmy Awards took a different approach this year. The Los Angeles-based gathering of television’s best chose to co-opt the one event this year that was universally loved: The New York Knicks winning the NBA championship.To continue the celebration, the Emmys reached out to longtime Law & Order: SVU star Mariska Hargitay to host this year’s awards. She not only attended multiple NBA Finals games courtside this summer, but also joined the championship parade through the streets of New York City on Knicks point guard Jalen Brunson’s float. So, since the Emmys don’t have an award for “Best Thing We Saw on TV This Year” (yet), Hargitay used her hosting privileges to give viewers the next best thing. She brought out Brunson himself.“Have you ever felt like you had millions of eyes on you and it all came down to one night?” Hargitay asked the basketball star in a pre-show video of the two steaming their outfits. “Seriously?” Brunson joked.It was a smart move, and maybe the only one the Emmys had this year. Following a hard-to-watch musical parody cover of “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” titled “I Love TV Shows” that even “Weird Al” Yankovic would have passed on, Hargitay (thankfully) revealed that she actually did prepare some jokes tonight.Kevin Winter//Getty Images“The Emmys are celebrating their 78th year and NBC is celebrating is 100th year,” she joked, “and I have been on Law & Order SVU for all of them.”“It’s a lot of pressure, but it is so reassuring to see so many familiar faces out there, and I’m just talking about how many of you i’ve arrested on SVU,” she said. “I couldn’t do any of this without thanking the genius behind SVU, Dick Wolf... which isn’t even his real name. It’s Richard Penis.”But the best joke of the monologue? When Hargitay pretended that she didn’t know how to pronounce “finale” because she’s never had one.Hargitay was up for two Emmys this year as well, though not for SVU. My Mom Jayne: A Film by Mariska Hargitay, an HBO documentary about her mother, Jayne Mansfield, was nominated for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special and Outstanding Directing for a Documentary or Nonfiction Special. Hargitay won both before the main broadcast even started, but that doesn’t mean she was done counting her accolades.“The Emmys are celebrating their 78th year and NBC is celebrating is 100th year,” she joked, “and I have been on Law & Order SVU for all of them.”Barring another musical parody number, I’d say that’s a major accomplishment.