The news that Mariska Hargitay will host this year’s Primetime Emmys didn’t inspire many posts in the usual social spaces, and there’s a good reason why. Despite last year’s ceremony boasting a four-year viewership high, the general audience doesn’t seem to care who’s announced as the host — unless it’s someone they’ve openly criticized.
Hargitay, largely known for apprehending “especially heinous” offenders for the last 27 years as Olivia Benson on “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” is just about the farthest away from an objectionable choice as you can get.
What gives her the edge on the typical award show host? She’s not a comedian.
At a time when many big-name comedians continue to fall out of favor with viewers, that might be Hargitay’s most crucial asset.
The general audience doesn’t seem to care who’s announced as the host — unless it’s someone they’ve openly criticized. Hargitay, largely known for apprehending “especially heinous” offenders for the last 27 years, is just about the farthest away from an objectionable choice as you can get.
Take, for instance, Kevin Hart, who was previously tapped to host the 2019 Oscars and bowed out following backlash about his resurfaced old tweets largely targeting the gay community. The comedian was back in the news once again due to the fallout from his Netflix roast in May. Comedians Tony Hinchcliffe and Shane Gillis were understandably called out for including jokes mentioning George Floyd’s inability to breathe and Hart getting lynched, respectively, in their sets. Hart telling critics that “tasteless” jokes have always been part of any roast only intensified the ire.
Other previously widely beloved comedians considered shoo-ins to host award shows now get the cold shoulder from audiences. Ellen DeGeneres (who hosted the Emmys in 2005 and the Oscars in 2007 and 2014), Dave Chappelle and Louis C.K. have all fallen from grace in part due to their own myriad offenses, including workplace toxicity, anti-transgender comments, and sexual misconduct. Eddie Murphy, who co-hosted the 1983 Emmys and withdrew from hosting the 2012 Oscars in solidarity with the now-canceled producer Brett Ratner, continues to apologize for his decades-old jokes about gay people.
Even Hasan Minhaj, whose success catapulted with his Netflix series, “Patriot Act,” and who was once poised to take over “The Daily Show,” is still reeling from a baffling 2023 New Yorker exposé on the “emotional truths” behind his comedy that derailed his career.
From the comedians’ own unravelings, failure to evolve to the audiences’ bad-faith misreadings, or sheer disinterest, to say there’s a disconnect between the two groups is to put it lightly. Comedians such as Wanda Sykes (who co-hosted the 2022 Oscars), Nikki Glaser (who hosted the Golden Globes in 2025 and 2026 and will return next year), Jerrod Carmichael (2023 Globes host), Josh Johnson and Chris Fleming have mostly managed to appeal to audiences. But that doesn’t make up for the fact that many recent stand-up acts might be critically acclaimed, but too few of them seem to garner the level of public praise as others do ire from fans. Even the news that ComicView, the iconic BET stand-up series, was getting a new reboot barely made waves online.
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Tension between comics hosting award shows and audiences isn’t particularly new, though; it’s been mounting for decades. When Oscars host Chevy Chase opened the 1988 ceremony with the rather soft quip, “Good evening, Hollywood phonies,” the disdain from the audience was palpable, and he was never asked to host the show again. During an exchange with Emmys co-host Murphy, Joan Rivers joked in 1983, “You’re a Catholic and a Black. I’m a woman and a Jew, and if you had a limp we could be the committee appointed by James Watt,” in reference to the U.S. Secretary of the Interior’s offensive remark. Rivers followed that quip by calling Watt an “idiot” and NBC still received hundreds of complaints from viewers.
But the blowback has only catapulted in the era of social media, where millions of viewers from across the globe can drag award show hosts for filth in real time.
Many recent stand-up acts might be critically acclaimed, but too few of them seem to garner the level of public praise as others do ire from fans.
Ricky Gervais, who hosted the Globes in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2016 and 2020, is a prime example. He is no stranger to being on the receiving end of criticism, in part due to scathingly roasting audiences and even deadnaming Caitlyn Jenner in 2016. Still, Gervais remained undeterred, doubling and tripling down on his comedy and delivering a since-viral “I don’t care” monologue during his final hosting stint.
But things shifted in the years following the so-called cultural reckoning of 2020. Award show producers seemed to scramble for hosts that didn’t already have a record of ruffling feathers and could, at the bare minimum, garner a few chuckles from the crowd. Plus, some might have referred to themselves as trying to meet the moment.
That might have brought us to a theoretically successful 2022 Oscars with hosts Sykes, Regina Hall and Amy Schumer. But the night was soiled after presenter Chris Rock, who had previously hosted the show in 2005 and 2016, delivered a stale quip relating Jada Pinkett Smith’s bald head to Demi Moore’s shaved head in the 1997 military drama “G.I. Jane.” In response, Will Smith, a Best Actor nominee that night and Pinkett’s husband, walked up on stage and slapped Rock. The Earth all but shifted on its axis following this, due to the breathtakingly bonkers discourse that followed the incident.
One thing was obvious: award show producers took great strides to prevent that type of off-the-cuff moment involving comedians from ever happening again.
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But award show producers weren’t totally ready to give up on comics altogether. In that sense, a generally affable comedian like Jo Koy seemed like an apt choice to host the Golden Globes in 2024. That is, except for the fact that he had no crossover appeal and was known for often dull humor that was unfit for a room filled with stuffy, self-serious people grappling with their own nerves throughout the evening. He largely bombed. But when he delivered one of very few wry jokes about the Globes showing fewer reaction shots of Taylor Swift than the NFL, audiences at both the Beverly Hilton Hotel and at home didn’t hold back their criticism of what they considered an array of “sexist” jabs.
Emmy producers were probably trying to adapt to the changing attitudes around comics when they hired Nate Bargatze (who The Atlantic called “the nicest man in stand-up” in 2021) to host the ceremony last year. Years earlier, he had stopped using curse words in his acts and his shows are decidedly unpolitical. Bargatze catapulted to mainstream status after portraying a silly version of the famously reprehensible though widely respected George Washington on “SNL” without antagonizing anyone, least of all Washington. Bargatze was, as many had remarked, a “unifying” figure.
That is until he was outed in June for attending Donald Trump’s 80th birthday bash, angering his liberal fans who accused him of being a supporter of the president and a “bootlicker.” Two months have since passed, and he’s still offered no explanation for his appearance, which incidentally only affirms suspicions.
Which brings us now to Hargitay, who Pearlena Igbokwe, NBCUniversal’s TV chair, told Variety simply “engenders goodwill.” While Igbokwe added that Hargitay has “a wicked sense of humor,” it would be a shock to hear the “SVU” star do anything resembling a roast or zingers in the vein of Rivers or Sykes. Hargitay has been tight-lipped about what producers have in store for the night, though she did reveal her aspirations for doing something in the vein of an “SVU musical” during the ceremony. That’s certainly an inspired idea. It might also support the whole pleasing vibe producers seem to be going for with this hosting choice.
What’s not being said, though, is that we’re in an era of comfort viewing. Some of the most legendary comics are now flattening their material and steering clear of zingers of the political or nonpolitical variety to the point where their work is beyond recognition. Some of the biggest pop culture offerings—from “The Odyssey” to “Little House on the Prairie” — are redos of familiar earlier works because too many audiences don’t want to be challenged or too many studios are petrified of anything resembling a risk. Of course an actor largely known for taking down sexual offenders on a cop procedural and for being a massive Knicks fan will host the Emmys.
Because if there is one thing that seemingly everyone from all backgrounds and beliefs can agree on is that rapists are bad and that the Knicks are the best. Hargitay might not be the most interesting choice, but her hiring is an indicative choice of the cultural period we’re in right now.
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