The Best, Worst, and Weirdest Moments of the 2026 Emmys

0:01Into the wild, the Cartier Panther encounters a shimmering crocodile, a lonely lovebird, a breathless zebra, and a restless tiger.

0:21Hello and welcome to Little Gold Men, a vanity fairs podcast for film, TV, and awards lovers. I'm Rebecca Ford. And I'm Hilary Bussis. John Ross is not with us today, sadly, because he's flying home from Toronto as we speak. But for the record, I am also at the Toronto International Film Festival, and I made it. So take that as you will. John is going to love this episode. All right, today we're recovering from and we're reacting to television's biggest night of the year, the Emmy Awards. I was at the Peacock Theatre for the ceremony last night, and Hilary tuned in from John's hotel room in Toronto, where they've been covering TIFF.

0:56I did, and I ate poutine because I'm in Canada, and that is what you do. Better food than there was at the theater, but we'll get to that. And joining us today for the very first time to discuss last night's show is Vanity Fair's executive editor, Maggie Coghlan. Maggie, welcome to Little Gold Men. Hi, guys. I'm so excited to talk to you about the Emmys on Very Little Sleep, and I have lots of thoughts. Yeah, I haven't slept enough to talk about what Shailene Woodley wore. I know. Maggie, what was your setup to watch the show? My setup to watch the show, I had a nice two-monitor situation. We got the live blog on the big screen.

1:34We've got YouTube TV on the laptop, you know, kind of toggling in between. We have my husband making pasta. We have my dog in the dog bed. It was quite nice. Highly recommend. Oh, I imagine you have like a Bloomberg terminal set up for a more show. Exactly. Well, Maggie, you're like the air traffic controller of the Vanity Fair coverage. So I don't know how you do it, but now I know a little bit more that it requires multiple screens. It's a lot of me saying, oh my God, did you see that? Hillary, can you take this? Someone else, can you take this? Rebecca, do you see this? It's me in an orange vest sitting at my desk.

2:07Well, before we dive into the results, I want to hear sort of your one word or one sentence review of the Emmys. Hillary? Boy, one sentence. It was kind of a boring show. I don't want to slack off on the Emmys because they did give a lot of awards to Widows Bay. We'll get to that. That's a new show. It's an exciting show. It's exciting when something new can break through, which has happened in more recent Emmys history, but doesn't always happen. But when one show sweeps, it's great if you like that show, but it does make for a bit of a snoozy ceremony. Maggie, I don't know if you feel the same way, but I do see you nodding.

2:45I got to agree. I mean, my take here is that I could have watched, I don't know, three hours of Mariska. I just thought she was really funny and compelling and went for it in all of her bits. So it could have been just a one-woman variety show for me and I would have been fine with it. I also was going to say brief but boring because it was on time. It was actually under. It was under. Yeah, which is extremely rare for a show. And I guess, you know, they made the decision to move a few of the categories to last week's two-day Emmy Palooza and take them off the main broadcast, which I think was probably a mistake because I would have loved to see David Harbour win live.

3:22And Linda Cardellini. And Linda Cardellini. Yeah. So I wasn't a huge fan of that and it seems like maybe they didn't need to do it. But I will say in the room, the show moved. Like you never felt kind of bored, but you did at the same time because the winners weren't that exciting because I think by the time the show started, we sort of knew Widow's Bay was going to sweep based on what happened last weekend. But we'll get into all of that. But we do have a very special message from John, who has recorded a voicemail because he cannot resist being in this episode. John won't be silenced. So we haven't heard it.

3:56So let's hear it. I was asked to give three hot takes to play for you throughout the podcast. And by asked, I mean I demanded to do it because I thought that ceding sort of any attention away from myself was unbearable. First take, they cut a bunch of awards to fit in some prolonged musical numbers that didn't really work. But I think what they really did was cut a bunch of awards so that they could sell more ads. Hot take two, was Mariska Hargitay great? No, but she was having fun. She actually enjoyed being there. She cared. We love her. She got Taylor Swift, and it was a reminder when booking a host to have the person actually want to do the job.

4:48Also, you could tell how much the audience loved her and was willing to join her on her hair journey. And lastly, yay Widow's Bay, but overall the same three shows pretty much won everything, which is the problem with the Emmys. Hillary, I know you just left my hotel room, but I already miss you. Rebecca, if I could have been with you last night at the Emmys, I'd be here. Love and light. See you soon. Bye. Yeah. Okay, John. We need John Ross unplugged. Maggie, you've never seen John Ross plugged. Fair, fair. I think his points are pretty much in agreement with most of them, I think. I disagree with Mariska, though.

5:41I think she was good. I don't think that she was just enthusiastic. I think that she did a good job. I loved the outfit changes. I loved the wigs. I have no idea how they did it. They all looked really natural. That was my biggest question of the night. I don't understand how she changed her hair. Is it just wigs? Like a 30-second change between things. That's crazy. Did she learn something on Broadway? She had a one-woman show where she just wore the same thing the whole time. I mean, after every commercial break, I was like, now what? What's it going to be? I was really on the edge of my seat for the hair.

6:11So she succeeded in that. The musical numbers, maybe not as, I don't know if she's a musical performer, but enthusiasm does go a long way. The musical numbers didn't work in the room. I don't know if they sound different on television, but that I think was the roughest part. But I think once she started the monologue, everyone was like, okay, we're in good hands. Because that was a really strong monologue. She made a little fun of herself. She also proved how badass she is. It was really good. But, and like John said, I think she cared, which I think we have experienced when a host doesn't care and it really doesn't work.

6:45So that part, I think, worked well. But the feedback from the parties was maybe the singing was a little too adventurous for her. But, yeah, the monologue and her jokes, I think that they all landed. And Stephen Colbert, when he won, said from the stage that his old head writer, Ariel Dumas, was the head writer for the Emmys. And she did a great job. She did do a great job. I mean, can we talk about Richard Penis, the Dick Wolf show? Oh, yeah. And I couldn't do any of this without thanking the genius behind SVU, the legendary Dick Wolf. And I got to say, you know, over the years, there have been a lot of jokes about his name, which is so unfair.

7:27Because Dick Wolf isn't even his real name. His real name is Richard Penis. I mean, I'm going to remember that one for years. It had me laughing so hard. I can't believe, has nobody made that joke before? If not, then kudos. It got me too. Yeah, and the finale one where she pretended not to know what that word was. Like, I also really liked it. Yeah, there was some really good jokes. So I think overall a success. And I think people give her so much love that it forgives anything that maybe was a little bumpier. All right, should we dig into the winners? You know, Widow's Bay, big winner. I think by the time the show started, I sort of knew that's what was going to happen.

8:10I mean, huge night for Apple. We talked about on this podcast how they weren't really a contender for a lot of years. And this year, I mean, they just killed it. So was anyone surprised? You guys both kind of knew that was going to happen, I assume. Well, we had that moment, Rebecca, when we were predicting the Emmys, and we were like, are we just hoping that Widows Bay will win because we so badly don't want to see Hacks win again because that would be also boring. Yeah. And it wasn't just wishful thinking. It wasn't just wishful thinking. Even like I'm happy for Jean Smart. Congratulations on your fifth Emmy for the same show.

8:45But that felt a little boring. So I was like, oh, maybe I would have been bored if Hacks won. I don't like when one show wins everything, but that's clearly what happened with Widows Bay last night. Yeah, and everything else. I mean, The Pit season two didn't hit as much and it didn't win as much. But, you know, no, Wiley got another Emmy. the show got another Emmy. I wonder if it'll continue to be a player or will now just kind of be a steady performer for HBO Max going forward. I don't know if it keeps being an Emmy show. It is a shame, I guess, for the ensemble that all of those supporting actors and all of those supporting actresses cancel each other out in the end.

9:22And so nobody walked home with a statue.

9:28We're going to take a quick break. When we get back, more of our takes from this year's Emmy Awards.

9:45Into the wild, the Cartier Panther encounters a shimmering crocodile, a lonely lovebird, a breathless zebra, and a restless tiger.

10:06I think being a presenter in an award show is very difficult because a lot of them you can see are just reading whatever was written for them on the teleprompter. I missed some of the show because I was out in the lobby, but I'd say my favorite was probably John Mulaney. I think that whole bit, I hope it worked on television, but it worked really well in the room. This is the best part of the night. Lead actor in a drama. This award is for the guys. Since the creation of television, men have been historically unrepresented. For the first three years TV existed, there were no men on it. It was just beauty contests and children talking to hand puppets.

10:44Until the early 60s, until a man walked out and said, Enough! My name is Fonzie and the president's been shot. 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. I had that moment where I'm like, could he just host again? I know he's hosted before, but I feel like I would be happy to have him host an awards show again. You like took the words completely. I think I wrote those exact words in our live podcast. Yeah, every awards show, he comes up, he presents, he kills, he comes up with a unique bit and everybody is like, why won't he just host the Oscars?

11:26but he just does not want to. Which is the biggest mystery in Hollywood to me. You need that buy-in. You know, that's what we learned from Mariska. If you're having fun, the audience knows. If he doesn't want to do it, it's probably not going to land the same way. He will host smaller awards shows. He's done the Governor's Awards, which are not televised. He's done the Indie Spirits with his friend and collaborator, Nick Kroll. But yeah, just not one of the big ones. And I don't get it. He would be so good. Maybe somebody can work on Olivia Munn to work on him. Maybe she can convince him. Were there any other presenters that stood out?

11:58We got to talk about how we ended the night with Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson. I was like, how long has this been going on? Like, I'm just like watching the clock. We're so close to the end of the show. It's banter. We're making references to True Detective. I'm like, what's happening? Well, when you are running short, you bring those guys out and then you will come in on time because they will not leave. But it seemed like they were told, right, to stretch it out or do you think that was a bit? They said that. Yeah, it was a little low energy sort of to end the show, at least in the room, because everyone was like, what is happening?

12:33Yeah, you don't want to drag out the last award of the night. Yeah. Right. You got to hype it up. It's a big one. I thought it was interesting how they flipped drama and comedy, though, because usually the show ends, I think, most of the time with the drama category. But I think comedy was the more competitive race. So that was a good way to do it. And I felt like we ended with the, you know, big, big winners. Also, as an older millennial, I have to shout out Sarah Michelle Gellar and David Boreanaz. The audience like lost their mind when that happened. I was like, oh, this is the biggest moment.

13:06Yeah. Did you, Hillary, last night in the live blog, I felt like maybe you were talking about it's been 30 years since Buffy. Is that? I'm so sorry to say that it has been. That's unbelievable. Isn't that horrible and disgusting? Oh, I'm melting. Doesn't that fill you with dread and rage? I thought they did the right amount of sort of those nostalgic moments. Like some years they've had like a whole thing where it's like the set is reimagined. Well, they have a thing where, yeah, the cast just kind of stands there and everybody just claps for them. You may as well give them something to say, yeah.

13:35Right, right. Making them presenters, I think, was the way to do it this time, which was nice. I liked the Charlie's Angels moment. That was nice. So there were just enough where it didn't feel like all we're doing is talking about old TV shows. but it felt like still made people excited to see some of those combinations. Yeah. I also thought the moments for Dolly Parton and Catherine O 'Hara were really nice. And Rob Reiner. And Rob Reiner. Those were really beautiful and very authentic feeling, like very heartfelt and really in the room. You could like hear people sort of like sighing and, you know, in sadness.

14:11And like, I thought those were all really beautiful moments and played really well. Yeah, it was a brutal year. Yeah. A lot of just really sad, terrible losses. And, you know, I think it's interesting how they asked the audience not to clap during the montage to try to give everybody the same amount of respect. Every award show. Every award show, it doesn't work. No, for Tim Curry, he broke containment, which I understand. Yeah, I know. And I was sitting by a woman way in the back. Thank you to the TV Academy for putting me in the third to last row who had like by this point had too much to drink and was just clapping even when there was no one on the screen.

14:50Just when he was singing, she was clapping. She just loves Noah Kahn. She must be. And everyone around her was like, this is very awkward. But that's what it's like in the nosebleeds, guys, in case you're wondering. So that part will stick with me forever. because I was like, who is this lady? What did you guys think of the Taylor Swift sketch? I missed it. I was in the lobby. Oh, yeah, Maggie, I feel like this is your territory. Oh, man. I mean, the whole thing, if you know anything about Taylor Swift, you know she famously has this cat named Olivia Benson after Mariska's character on Law & Order, right?

15:21Can you tell me, were they friends before they started sitting in the Knicks front row together? Yes, I believe so. Because she's had this cat for some time. I mean, I am someone who obviously works in pop culture. I know a lot about Taylor Swift. I'm not someone who knows every Easter egg, but going into the show, the Olivia Benson cat was omnipresent in my mind that she would have to appear at some point. And I loved how they played with the back and forth, will she, won't she? Then she arrives in this, you know, red yarn of it all sketch on the show. And it's funny because like Swifties do look for Easter eggs and everything and Teller's like playing into it.

15:59And then, lo and behold, in real time, she's at the Chiefs game sitting with Tom Cruise in a box. So I'm like, this is a wild moment of Taylor Swift inception going on. Like, I don't know where to look. But it was like a nice surprise. It was very funny. Who doesn't love Law & Order SVU? Taylor looking up when they make the dun-dun was just like, yeah, that's what we want. And Mariska ended the show with it, too. So it's like, yeah, play to what we know a little bit. It's a loyal audience. Yeah, I mean, that sketch did feel like it was written by somebody who knows a lot about both SVU and Taylor Swift.

16:31This is all an investment in her Oscar nomination. Like, sitting next to Tom Cruise, very obviously to me, is like, you two want Oscars, I get it. And even being in this show, I swear to God, I was in the lobby and someone I know was like, oh, she wants to win an Oscar. And I was like, all right. Look at my award shows just colliding at the Emmys. Yeah. I did have the thought last night where I'm like, is sitting next to Taylor Swift at a Chiefs game movie marketing that is just priceless? Like, it's unbeatable. Everyone is seeing you knowing you've got something coming out soon. Well, the movie's called Digger and nobody knows what it is or what it's about.

17:08So you've got to get it out there somehow. A lot of market, like even when some, like Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey, like they're promoting a show. Every time Florence Pugh, you know, she'll be back next year probably with East of Eden at the Emmy. So I'm always like, well, I'm impressed with your level of investment into your future perhaps Emmy nomination. Oh, yeah. And Florence Pugh was presenting with Julia Garner, who also has a new Netflix limited series coming out this fall, which is called The Altruist and which is about Sam Bankman Freed. Did you even know that? Now you do. So it worked, basically.

17:42Her plan worked, and we are talking about it. Anything that didn't play well in the show to you guys that felt like a more awkward moment? I mean, can we talk about Shailene Woodley's outfit? I mean, you've wanted to since we started this podcast. It was so crazy. It looked like dressed in the dark. Like, I understand that, like, actors have brand deals, and a lot of the time, I think they're sort of, I mean, Maggie, you can explain this better than I can, but they're sort of at the mercy of what they're dressed in. I mean, kudos to you for having such faith in me that I could explain this look.

18:19Because all I can tell you is that it was by Balenciaga. And I have questions. I looked at photos of it on the runway. I looked at photos of Shailene wearing it and still. So this was on the runway. She didn't assemble this in the dark by herself. Did it have the gloves on the runway? I believe so. I'm looking it up right now. Why? Oh, wait. On the runway. I'm not seeing the gloves. I'm seeing the model with kind of a cape, the same top and the same pants. Okay. Okay, so does the cape really bring the whole thing together? If she had the cape on, would we not be talking about this right now? I think we'd still be talking about it, just maybe in a different way.

18:56It's crazy because she won at the Creative Arts Emmys last weekend, and I thought she had a very nice dress on, showed off her height, and she looked good. So I just, it's confusing. It's confusing to me. I mean, I guess we're all talking about it. So is that what Balenciaga wants? No. I think they would probably like us to be talking about it in a complimentary way. Oh, Emmy's red carpet fashion. You never know what you're going to get. It's not like the Oscars where everyone, for the most part, turns up in a gown. I think we should probably just go there since we're talking about it already.

19:33And Maggie, you are our expert. Like, what were the best looks of the night? I mean, I loved Zendaya in custom Prada. She was sparkling. It was just, I felt like she floated onto that red carpet in a pair of satin shoes. She has like a great like Halle Berry haircut now. Yeah. She looks stunning. Like, just perfect. Styled by Law Roach, her longtime stylist and collaborator. Just those two have such a great partnership. They were also, shameless plug on Vanity Fair's best dress list. They were featured as one of the best duos. They've been working together for such a long time. And you can really see like the comfort level that she wears stuff like this that is both super flattering and risk taking.

20:12It was a plunging neckline. It was super sparkly, you know, not something you see everybody in every day. So I was super excited to see her looking so great on the carpet. I mean, thank God for her being there. Oh, yeah. I was about to say Zendaya arrived at the Emmys, which, you know, we weren't positive that she was necessarily going to. She was nominated for Euphoria, but it was the last season of Euphoria. And we all know how that went over generally. You know, everybody loves her performance on that show, but the show itself kind of had a swift fall away from the zeitgeist. But she came to the show with her husband, Tom Holland, but they did not pose together.

20:44But Rebecca, you found him. He was trying to sneak in. My favorite run-in of the night, because there's basically two entrances into the lobby. There's one where all the celebrities who did the carpet come through. And it's so crowded over there. I cannot be there for long because it's just tons of looky-loos, like trying to get selfies. And then I was like, I can't be here anymore. So I walked to the other side where the normal people like me walk in. And then I look up and you have this moment sometimes where you're like, oh, I know that person. And then you're like, no, that's Tom Holland. But it was just him and like one handler with him.

21:18And people really didn't notice that it was Tom Holland? They didn't. And I was so shocked. I just like followed them because I was like, no one's noticing this. No one asked him for a selfie. He just stood by the elevator and then he went in somewhere else probably to meet her. But yeah, he did a really impressive sneak into the theater that I just happened to accidentally see. But I like that about them, that they let the other one have the moment. But I think this is the first award show they've gone to together, which is big. Yeah, premieres and stuff. Premieres, but an actual, like the Oscars, she's been a lot and he hasn't been there at those years that she's there.

21:55And so that was great. And then they sat together, so you did get those pictures of them at their table together. But I feel like that was probably the most exciting surprise of this show because, like we're saying, the winners weren't all great. Okay, Maggie, anyone else that really blew you away on the carpet? I mean, when we first saw Mariska on the carpet and she was posing with her family in that fire hydrant red dress by Monsei, I thought that was super stunning. And looking into it, some people think that maybe it was a reference to something that her mom, Jane Mansfield, wore in the 50s.

22:29So if, in fact, it was an homage, that's very cool. But the dress was tailored beautifully. It was very fun, very glam. and just like pulling into those like old Hollywood roots, I think was a great moment for her to announce her arrival on the carpet. And I think her daughter wore a red dress too, very similar. So like a nice mother-daughter moment there. Wait, we have to talk about Meg Stalter. Yes, that was what I was gonna say next to Marie. Oh yes, please, so many questions. Actually the star of the red carpet, Meg Stalter turning up as an Emmy. Emmy herself. Just like, do you want to talk about commitment to the bit?