Emmys Flub Outstanding Guest Actor Win with Confounding Technical Glitch

Ryan Lattanzio
·3 min read

Those tuned into the virtual Creative Arts Emmy Awards on Saturday night on FXX were surely puzzled when the announcement came for the winner of Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series. While Ron Cephas Jones was the confirmed winner for his turn in NBC’s beloved “This Is Us,” heading into its fifth season this November, the editor, and the voiceover, didn’t quite get it right. The awards announcer actually named Jason Bateman as the winner, for his performance in “The Outsider,” but the show meanwhile displayed a title card for Cephas’ win as William Hill in “This Is Us.”

The production team managed to correct the error with a card after the fact announcing that Cephas was, indeed the winner, and an announcement from the Television Academy with the correction was made in the virtual media center.

It wasn’t the first flub for the Emmys team on Saturday night. During the award for Outstanding Period and/or Character Hairstyling, which went to Netflix’s “Hollywood,” the names of the winners were instead dubbed as “NEED NAMES.” In addition, a card for Eddie Murphy’s guest acting win on “Saturday Night Live” was shown during Maya Rudolph’s win for her guest turn on the show.

The disheveled ceremony wraps a week-long unveiling of the Creative Awards Emmys, ahead of the big show on Sunday night, which will be hosted by Jimmy Kimmel. The Primetime Emmys will air on Sunday, September 20 on ABC at 8 p.m. ET. The three-hour event will be hosted by Jimmy Kimmel. Although the event will not be streamed for free, cord-cutters can tune in to the festivities via streaming services such as Hulu + Live TV or YouTube TV, both of which offer free trials.

Check out the full list of Creative Arts Emmy winners via IndieWire’s coverage here. The ceremony premiered on FXX, as hosted by Nicole Byer.

While the 2020 Primetime Emmys are taking place during a period of unprecedented uncertainty for the television industry, the recent 2020 Emmy nominations were as full of snubs, surprises, and all manner of excitement as the Emmys always have been. HBO’s “Watchmen” emerged from the latest round of Emmy nominations as 2020’s television show to beat. The acclaimed sequel to the timeless comic earned 26 Emmy nominations, including an Outstanding Limited Series nomination, and helped HBO Entertainment lead the pack as the year’s most successful studio in terms of Emmy nominations.

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