Last night’s 70th Primetime Emmy Awards were pretty run-of-the mill. Celebrities made stale jokes about the fact that Hollywood remains insanely dominated by white characters and white actors, and the telecast itself seemed to last an eternity.
But a shining, standout moment came when Glenn Weiss, who had just won an Emmy for Outstanding Direction of a Variety Program for his work on the most recent Oscars ceremony, proposed to his girlfriend, Jan Svendsen, onstage. It stands to reason that a talented master of ceremonies would know exactly how to engineer a television moment for the ages.
In fact, the only people more shocked than Svendsen (who, of course, said yes) were all the delighted stars in the audience, who were clearly not used to seeing such an impromptu display of emotion at an event as regimented as the Emmys.
Just take a look at the video: Sterling K. Brown, who presented Weiss with his award, gasped in delight when the winner revealed that the ring he was presenting to Svendsen was his recently deceased mother’s. Claire Foy wiped ecstatic tears from her eyes. Javier Bardem looked like he’d just won a trip to the moon. The audience stood and cheered.
It was sweet, touching and, like many of the show’s wins last night, totally unexpected.
