The Media Guy Struggles: Melting on the Emmys Red Carpet

Sunday, September 20, 2015

Melting on the Emmys Red Carpet

Okay, so where am I?

Yes, indeed I am at the newly named Microsoft Theatre (formerly the Nokia Theatre) in Downtown Los Angeles at the Primetime Emmy Awards. Before I talk about the triple digit heat on the red carpet, I must declare that I really want to party with three women:

Click here to watch the commercial.

While I was backstage eyeing up one of those golden statues, the biggest highlight came Apple Music as they premiered they new spot featuring Taraji P. Henson and Kerry Washington hanging with Mary J. Blige at her crib fantasizing about mix tapes and doing air drums to Phil Collins' "In The Air Tonight". I mean, really! This is everyman's dream, isn't it? (Incidentally, this also counts as the winner of my regular feature, "AD OF THE WEEK/MONTH/WHATEVER".)

Back to the heat...the way you heard celebrities talking about the scorching City of Angels heat, you might have thought they were preparing to join Lawrence of Arabia in the Arab Revolt. There was a lot of moaning about the heat and, I think, Mario Lopez lost 42 ounces of water surrounding all those muscles:

I wasn't too far from E! News's Giuliana Rancic and every time she stopped one of the nominees they moaned about how they were making the intolerable expedition from their air-conditioned limousines to the air-conditioned Microsoft Theater without needing an IV for their dehydration. I bet most were secretly wishing they were in Celine Dion's old Caesars Palace digs with her special climate control system while their tuxedos and Haute Couture melted on the red carpet. Ah, the struggle!

Amish Kitteridge starrring Frances McDormand

The fashion was interesting to say the least. Leading the best dressed were Taraji P. Henson from Empire, Jaimie Alexander from NBC's Blindspot (see gallery below), and me! There was the Heidi Klum yellow canary disaster too. But my pick for the "I Didn't Think the Emmys Were This Weekend So I Didn't Shop for a Dress" goes to Academy Award- (and now) Emmy Award-winning actress Frances McDormand who showed up looking like she rode all week from the Amish farm in preparation. Yikes!

Another Michael (over at Dlisted) noted that in the 67 years that the Emmys have existed, Viola is the only black woman to win the Lead Actress in a Drama trophy and that’s just crazy to me. Viola used all of her time on stage to talk about the lack of good lead roles for black actresses. She started with a Harriet Tubman quote and went on to say that “the only thing that separates women of color from anyone else is opportunity.”

Viola preached! But not everyone was screaming “TELL IT” Meryl Streep-style over Viola’s powerful speech.

Nancy Lee Grahn, known as Alexis Davis to people who watch General Hospital and known as “WHO?!” to people who don’t, was not into what Viola said. Nancy Lee basically screamed “ALLACTRESSLIVESMATTER” on Twitter and went on and on and on.

Mikkos Cassadine needs to come and get his daughter, because Nancy Lee said that Viola is a member of the TV elite who has never faced discrimination and that the Emmy stage wasn’t the place to bring up racial issues in Hollywood. Nancy Lee deleted a few of her tweets, but something called “shift + command + 4″ exists and so Buzzfeed and others screen shot her “greatest hits.”

I don’t know why everyone hated on Nancy Lee. I mean, I, for one, learned something from her rant. The African American history professor tweeted (and deleted) this:

"Heard it and went oh lord ur a great actress just accept it and I heard Harriet Tubman and I thought Its a fucking emmy for gods sake. She wasn't digging thru a tunnel."

Nancy Lee is educating us all, because I did not know that the Underground Railroad was an actual tunnel dug by Harriet Tubman.

After Nancy Lee got dragged back and forth and continued to defend herself by saying that she can’t believe she’s getting so much hate, she took back everything she said and farted up this apology:

"I apologize for my earlier tweets and now realize I need to check my own privilege. My intention was not to take this historic and important moment from Viola Davis or other women of color but I realize that my intention doesn’t matter here because that is what I ended up doing. I learned a lot tonight and I admit that there are still some things I don’t understand but I am trying to and will let this be a learning experience for me."

Translation: “My agent and the executives at ABC made me type this.”

My reaction: Let people have their time and speak with the people they want to speak about. Maybe Nancy Lee needs to read The Secret and gain the power of being positive!

Red Carpet Gallery