One Emmys Moment Will Certainly Make History. It Was Not the One NBC Wanted.

Television By Enter your email to receive alerts for this author. Sign in or create an account to better manage your email preferences. Unsubscribe from email alerts Are you sure you want to unsubscribe from email alerts for Nadira Goffe? Sept 14, 202611:00 PM John Mulaney, mid-show-stopper. Kevin Winter/Getty Images Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. Move over, ladies, because tonight is a night for oppressed men! Or so John Mulaney would have you think with his crowd-crushing bit at the 78th Primetime Emmy Awards. The ceremony—which aired on NBC on Monday night instead of the usual Sunday to avoid a scheduling conflict with Sunday Night Football—had a lot of surprising moments. For starters, the evening was not hosted by a comedian but by the one and only Mariska Hargitay, the longtime Law & Order: SVU star lately known for her supporting role on the sideline of the Knicks’ championship run. Then a bunch of other unexpected things happened: The Diplomat’s Allison Janney won Best Drama Supporting Actress over The Pitt’s Katherine LaNasa; an award was presented in High Valyrian; and Megan Stalter of Hacks was dressed like an Emmy, which is to say she was painted head-to-toe in gold body paint, which must’ve made for an interesting shower later on. But the most shocking moment of the evening was Mulaney absolutely stealing the show with what maybe the funniest bit ever performed to present an award. Mulaney went on stage to hand out the trophy for Best Lead actor in a Drama Series, but instead of doing it straight or performing a stale skit, the stand-up comedian decided to dedicate a few minutes to a tongue-in-cheek speech bringing awareness to men’s oppression in Hollywood. “Finally something for the fellas,” Mulaney started. “What a crop of prom kings we have. They’re not soft like the dad from Bluey, no.” He deadpanned: “Since the creation of television, men have been historically unrepresented,” which nominee Sterling K. Brown seemed to find particularly hilarious. “For the first three years TV existed, there were no men on it. It was just beauty contests and children talking to hand puppets, until the early ’60s, until a man walked out and said, ‘Enough! My name is Fonzie and the president’s been shot!’” Mulaney joked, playing on Henry Winkler’s Happy Days character and Gaeton Fonzi, who investigated the Kennedy assassination. “But let’s talk about these bros tonight, these sweat hogs,” he pivoted, before ribbing on the annoyance of male actors’ propensity for method acting, saying “some of the men in this category do method acting, and some do regular, less annoying acting.” Mulaney didn’t stop there, going on to mock the variety of roles the nominees of the category represent, stating, “And they can play anything, these nominees, not just doctors. They can play a cop, or an FBI agent, or a secret agent, and then that’s it, no other examples.” But that wasn’t the real moment that stopped the show, and the one that seemed to send nominee Noah Wyle’s wife hiding for her life. No, the crown jewel of Mulaney’s bit were his props and his references, especially his reiteration—which will go down in Emmy’s history—of an infamous debate sparked by the hip-hop producer DJ Khaled: “I believe it was DJ Khaled who said real men don’t go down on their wives. But these nominees know that that is B.S. They know there’s often less pressure on them if they do that first.” (Hear hear! The Emmys, naturally, bleeped the moment, but you probably wouldn’t have been able to hear it over the crowd anyway.) The gags didn’t stop there. Mulaney then pulled out a book, which he rented from the Glendale Public Library. That book was, of course, a self-help treatise written by Frank Vincent—known for his work with Martin Scorsese and on The Sopranos—who, in 2006, published A Guy’s Guide to Being a Man’s Man (the cover of which is exactly what you’d expect it to be). Mulaney read an excerpt from the text, which goes: “A man’s man can be wearing the best clothes, drinking the finest wine, sitting with the most beautiful woman in Las Vegas, but if he doesn’t treat everyone around him with respect and class, he’s not a real man’s man, he’s just a jabroni in a good suit.” And with no transition, Mulaney then announced the nominees. Wyle would go on to win the award for his work on the hit medical procedural The Pitt, but Mulaney would go on to win the night for his hilarious subversion of today’s culture wars debate about misogyny and masculinity—and for supporting his local library. The full moment isn’t on YouTube yet, but you can watch it here. Emmys TV