We now know how the 2020 Emmy Awards might look when they air on September 20, 2020.
The show’s producers gave an interview and revealed details like how celebrities will be featured and how host Jimmy Kimmel will work the show.
“Jimmy loves to work live, and we love to work live,” executive producer Reginald Hudlin said (via Variety). “This is a show that will still very much be, whenever and however possible, a live show. There’s a lot of challenges that come with doing a live show in a COVID environment. But we’re not running from those problems, we’re embracing them.”
“One is that it’s so large that the crew can work safely under COVID-safe protocols and be at the appropriate distance from each other,” Hudlin said. “Because obviously the most important thing is safety first. The second part is, this show will need an unbelievable number of wiring connections in and out, because the nominees are not going to be there. So we’re going to take cameras to where they are. And the number of feeds that that requires is so massive that we need a facility like the Staples Center, which is used to having that much signal from reporters covering sports to handle the kind of in and outputs that it requires.”
There will be as many as 140 live feeds at once.
“This will all depend on the comfort level of the people at the other end, but we’ve got to go and find them,” Done+Dusted president Ian Stewart said (his company will handle the production this year.). “They might be at home, they might be in the garden, might be in a hotel, they might be standing on the side of the street. It doesn’t really matter, wherever they feel comfortable. But we want to bring every nominee that we can logistically, live into the show.”
“We’re not trying to make the Zoomies, we’re trying to make the Emmys,” Stewart said. “So one of the things we are trying to do is get the highest-end kit to wherever that person is on whatever level of comfort they have. The best thing for us is to have very high-end cameras, with a person operating them in somebody’s house or wherever they are. That’s our starting point.”
“If you want to be in your sweats on your sofa that’s also fine,” he continued. “It will be much more casual, much more fun, as we’re more in it together. It will go where it goes. We hope really well, but I can’t sit here and say that it’s going to go 100% perfectly because no one’s ever done it before.”
Added Hudlin, “So often when people win they award, they dedicate it to their kids. Well, your kids can be right there with you. Maybe you’re accepting the award from their bedroom. This is a chance to reinvent every aspect of it. We really want people to think about that.”
They added there may be live presenters at the show, and they’re looking into musical numbers as well.
See the full list of nominees for the 2020 Emmys.
