70th Emmy Awards: Opening Monologue

Please welcome your hosts Colin Jost and Michael Che, good evening, hello everyone, welcome to the

70th

Primetime Emmy Awards. I'm Colin Jost, I'm Michael che, yes, thank you, thank you, you know it's an honor to be here sharing tonight with the Many, many creative and talented people in Hollywood that haven't been caught yet this year, this year the public can drink in their seats. I hope you're excited about that, yeah, because all Hollywood needs right now is for people to lose their inhibitions. of job function we just want to quickly say hello to the thousands of you here in the audience tonight and the hundreds watching from home hello Silver Lining Senior Center you know who is not what my mother is not seeing what she said she is not seeing .

I like watching white

awards

shows because you guys don't believe in Jesus enough, that's true. The only people, the only white people who thank Jesus, are Republicans and crackheads. I don't even know. The first Emmy Awards were held in 1949. Things were very different. Back then gas was 17 cents a gallon, a new house cost seven thousand dollars and we all agreed that the Nazis were bad, in fact, Carlin, you'll like this, our NBC network has the most nominations of all the transmission chains, right, yeah, sure, which is nice. of being the sexiest person on life support, isn't that great, still doesn't look great, Netflix of course has the most nominations tonight, right, that's right, and if you're a network executive, that is the scariest thing you'll ever hear, except maybe Sir Ronan Farrow.

It's on line one, yeah, you don't want that call, you know, of course, there are so many amazing nominees here tonight, the credible nominees, blackish is nominated, that's right, blackish, that's also how I was asked to behave tonight , look how that is, you see how it is, one of our favorite shows, this is us, it's nominated for Best Drama, great, that's right, Milo is here, he plays Jack on the show, it's next season, yes that's us , we will explore Jack's experiences in Vietnam. in response to viewers who wrote and said saddest please that's true speaking of sad The Handmaid's Tale is nominated that's right yeah I don't know if you've seen it but The Handmaid's Tale takes place in the future imaginary where a whole group of people are violently forced to work and have babies against their will, it's what black people call history, yes, it's their roots for white women, that's what hurts.

Fruits would unite him. There were several dramatic rescues for TV shows this summer. Brooklyn Nine-Nine was canceled by Fox but picked up by NBC Last Man Standing was canceled by ABC and then picked up by Fox, which is good, that's right, and Roseanne was canceled by itself but picked up by white nationalists. Everything that's had a tough year, yeah, you know, I heard Roseanne is. actually moving to Israel Wow I mean how messed up is your life when you have to go to the Middle East just for peace of mind by the way congratulations to Laurie Metcalf yeah yeah wow that's amazing you know what a great actress she is are you.

Being nominated for Roseanne now is like nominating a cop for a Beatty Award, it's not a rare occurrence and television obviously has more options than ever this year Netflix will spend eight billion dollars on programming, they now have 700 original series which makes me realize. It just makes me realize that the program I presented to you must have been really bad. I mean, it's like I got turned down for a CBS rewards card while you guys are here. How does Netflix get all that money? It's like nine dollars a month and all. I know sharing the same Netflix account is like that Instagram model who's always in Dubai and you're like, yeah, but what did you actually do?

Now the Obamas even have their own production deal at Netflix and my dream is that the only thing they produce. is its own version of The Apprentice and it gets much higher ratings, things are getting better, but as we all know, television has always had a diversity problem, you know? I mean, can you believe they made 15 seasons of ER without a Filipino nurse? a hospital that's crazy even on a big show like Cheers, I mean, I love cheese, but you're telling me they made a show about an all-white sports bar in Boston in the '80s and no black guys came in, He saw everyone and then came back. there will certainly be even more diversity on television there is a latin magnum p.i there will be a black samantha and a bewitched reboot but it's going to be balanced it's going to be balanced by an all white reboot of atlanta called 15 miles outside of atlanta it centers on white women who They called the police on the cast of Atlanta Well, it's not perfect, it's not perfect, but I think television has come a long way in the last 70 years. that's what they're trying to say, right, that's right and with the incredible contributions of everyone in this room tonight I think we can keep the TV on for another five six years at most, but let's have some fun tonight, let's start handing out some trophies , you guys are excited.