NBC announced that Saturday Night Live‘s Weekend Update co-anchors Michael Che and Colin Jost will be hosting The Emmys this September. The show will be produced by Lorne Michaels and feature appearances by various SNL cast members. In a statement from NBC Entertainment chairman Robert Greenblatt, “NBC is thrilled to be the home of this year’s Emmy Awards, and with Colin and Michael in the driver’s seat as hosts, along with surprise appearances by other cast members of Saturday Night Live, I think we are in for one of the funniest awards shows in a long time.”
Che and Jost responded with a statement of their own, saying, “We’re proud to be the first duo hosting the Emmys since Jenna Elfman and David Hyde Pierce, and somehow that’s a real fact.” The selection of Che and Jost is not surprising: Saturday Night Live is experiencing a burst of relevance for its coverage of the Trump administration, with the 2016-2017 season winning an Emmy for Best Variety Show (the show hasn’t won this category since 1993, when head writers James Downey and Al Franken took home trophies). The same season also saw dual awards go to Alec Baldwin and Kate McKinnon in the Outstanding Supporting Actor/Actress in a Comedy Series categories.
It is, however, a disappointingly predictable selection. With the popularity of the Time’s Up and the #MeToo movement, it would have been exciting to see a woman host (Tiffany Haddish, Maya Rudolph, or both please), especially considering that the last female host was Jane Lynch in 2011. In fact, there have only been four female hosts of the Emmys in the past twenty years (five if you include Heidi Klum from the 60th Emmy Awards where the hosts were all reality TV personalities—not a great year for hosting). The last person of color to host was Bryant Gumbel in 1997.
Despite SNL’s insistence that Jost and Che are the future of comedy, I just can’t get excited about the bro-tastic duo. They’re fine and they get laughs, but they just don’t bring the chemistry or banter of great Weekend Update hosts Tina Fey and Jimmy Fallon, or Fey and Amy Poehler, or even Poehler and Seth Meyers. And Michael Che continues to disappoint with his immature transphobic jokes and unprofessional social media antics, which our own Princess Weekes has covered here.
In light of this past year being defined by major shifts in the cultural landscape, it is especially disappointing that the Emmys are proceeding with this uninspired choice of hosts. If they want to hire members of the SNL cast, I would much rather watch Aidy Bryant and Kate McKinnon take the stage.
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