Bold plan for Emmys broadcast

It will be an Emmy Awards like no other this year, when US television hands out its 72nd Primetime awards next month.

Host Jimmy Kimmel will anchor the big night from a stage in the Staples Center, Los Angeles, but there will be no audience and no red carpet.

Producers are hoping to get cameras out to all the nominees (woah), resulting in massive wiring coming into the venue (the awards normally take place across the street at the Microsoft Theatre, but Staples was chosen because of its size).

That’s up to 140 different locations.

“This will all depend on the comfort level of the people at the other end, but we’ve got to go and find them,” executive producer Ian Stewart tells Variety. “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.”

In some cases, recipients may agree to have a family member in a nominee’s COVID bubble to operate the broadcast camera. The goal is to avoid using platforms like Skype, Facetime or Zoom on their laptop or phones.

“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.”

There is also a question of whether winners will be holding a trophy, how that could be delivered, and challenges for international nominees, including Australians.

Either way producers expect the event to be more casual than ever before.

“If you want to be in your sweats on your sofa that’s also fine,” he said. “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.”

FOX Arena will screen the Emmys in Australia, however they transpire, Live at 10am AEST on Monday September 21st.