Nate Bargatze’s Awkward Emmys Stunt Was Even More Ill-Conceived Than We Thought

Nate Bargatze says that his attempt to minimize every Emmy-winner’s acceptance speech with a running gag that seemed antithetical to the entire point of having an awards show “came from a real place of heart,” but he didn’t think it would have to come from his wallet, too.

At the 77th Primetime Emmy Awards earlier this month, host Bargatze made a bizarre choice that certainly broke the mold and made his stint as the master of ceremonies memorable. As Bargatze had warned he would, the comedian had the Emmys add a timer to the production that measured each award winner’s acceptance speech, and, for every second they went over their allotted limit, Bargatze promised to withdraw $1,000 from a $100,000 donation to the Boys & Girls Club of America. In the aftermath of the uncomfortable stunt, and regardless of the negative number remaining on the donation counter following the final speech, Bargatze ended up giving the charity $250,000 along with another $100,000 from CBS — but he wasn’t happy about it.

During a recent episode of his podcast Nateland, Bargatze admitted that, when he first proposed his charity-based guilt trip scheme for the Emmys, he didn’t think that he was going to end up footing the bill, believing that the networks or streaming services would volunteer to cover the costs of their stars’ long speeches for the Boys & Girls Club of America.

I’m starting to think that Bargatze might actually be as dumb as he claims he is.

“I wasn’t trying to put anyone on the spot. I wasn’t trying to make someone donate money,” Bargatze said of his controversial acceptance speech scheme. “But in my head I kind of thought, ‘Make it fun.’” 

While many of the TV professionals honored that night played along with Bargatze’s bit, in the aftermath of the Emmys, trade publications and TV fans tore into Bargatze for what many felt was a mean-spirited distraction that seemed to spite the very premise of the awards show. “I wasn’t trying to overshadow any of their speeches,” Bargatze insisted, though he also wasn’t trying to be the benevolent benefactor that he eventually became either. “I thought it was gonna be, I don’t know, Netflix donating, or Apple. The shows that won!”

Bargatze believed that the winners would be the ones to put the companies on the spot in the speeches, explaining of his vision, “If someone was giving these long speeches, I just thought they could be like, ‘and Netflix is gonna cover my overage.'” 

“In my head I pictured it as they could then go long, but then be a hero. So it was like a win-win,” Bargatze continued. “And then the night becomes about love and you’re giving to these kids that are there and all this kind of stuff. I don’t know if I just didn’t explain it enough in the room.”

Presumably, Bargatze had hoped that the night’s many winners would easily burn through the extra 100 seconds of speech time that his non-donation would afford them, and that the multi-billion-dollar companies whom the Emmy winners represented would happily throw The Boys & Girls Club of America a few grand for an easy PR win on top of the Emmys prestige. Naturally, the donation counter ran out long before the end of the evening, but with no streaming company volunteering to cover the bill for Bargatze’s shortsighted scheme, he and CBS had to step in and save themselves from a PR nightmare.

“I had it in my head one way. It kind of came out another way, but the reasoning was there. I wasn’t gonna give that money at the end. I wasn’t thinking I was gonna have to. But the way it went, I was like, ‘I can’t — I’m not gonna not,’” Bargatze said of his begrudgingly generous donation. “And the Boys & Girls Club were awesome. They got it. I was trying to have a very giving night.”

He just didn’t want to be the one doing the giving, that’s all.