Right here’s an enormous query for you? Are you able to play it secure because the host of an awards telecast and nonetheless come out on high? The reply appears to be sure, as American actor and comic Anthony Anderson managed to ship uncontroversial with a flourish as he opened the seventy fifth annual Primetime Emmys.
Anderson, greatest often known as Dre Johnson on the tv comedy Black-ish, leaned into the seventy fifth anniversary of the awards by providing some mild, wry observations about tv itself earlier than enjoying lead performer for a medley of iconic tv themes together with Good Instances and The Details of Life.
Host Anthony Anderson opens the seventy fifth Primetime Emmy Awards. Credit score: AP
“Tv has formed the world, and extra importantly, it has formed me,” Anderson mentioned, noting that the evening nonetheless had 27 award acceptance speeches to come back. Anderson warned that his mom, Doris Anderson, would function an enforcer for any speeches that run lengthy. “Time’s up child, lower to the chase,” Doris mentioned, winding up Anderson’s opening.
Anderson then escorted Married … with Kids star Christina Applegate to the stage. Applegate revealed in 2021 that she had been recognized with a number of sclerosis. And her arrival on the stage was met with a direct standing ovation.
The Emmys come only a week after the Golden Globes, the place that telecast’s host Jo Koy was roasted for a flat efficiency. “I acquired the gig 10 days in the past. You need an ideal monologue?” he instructed the viewers. “You might be kidding me, proper? I wrote a few of these, and so they’re those you’re laughing at.”
That final line was seen by many as a dig on the writing staff who supplied him with a few of his materials. “I like my writers,” he later instructed the Los Angeles Instances. “I like them and I can’t cease speaking about them in each interview. They busted their ass, man. I would like to ensure I repair that, and I’ll, I at all times will.”
He additionally got here beneath fireplace in a sly gag by Critics Selection Awards host Chelsea Handler, who joked that she had deliberate to toss critically acclaimed director Martin Scorsese round “like slightly Italian meatball”. When the viewers laughed, she continued with a wry smile: “Thanks for laughing at that, my writers wrote it.”