As First Female Emmys Host in 15 Years, Hargitay Goes for Heart and Humor

Mariska Hargitay opened the 78th Emmy Awards Monday night the way she said everyone had warned her not to: sincerely. As the first woman to host the ceremony in fifteen years, she told the crowd she’d received two pieces of advice before taking the job, not to do it at all, and if she did, to avoid sincerity at all costs. She admitted she’d ignored the first and invited the audience to join her in ignoring the second.

The monologue followed a pre-taped musical opening called “I Love TV Screens,” a rewritten take on Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” featuring appearances from New York Knicks guard Jalen Brunson, Jennifer Coolidge and Jeff Hiller, with lyrics working in references to the year’s nominated shows.

Hargitay then took the stage in a silver-white gown and pivoted quickly into jokes about her twenty-seven seasons playing Detective Olivia Benson on “Law & Order: SVU.” She thanked her longtime boss Dick Wolf for the opportunity before delivering a groan-worthy punchline about his name, claiming his real one was something considerably less family-friendly.

The night’s sharpest comedic moment arrived when Hargitay began reciting the kind of hushed, reverent language familiar from movie-theater advertising, describing the feeling of lights dimming and images filling a screen. Nicole Kidman, seated in the audience, interrupted her mid-sentence, a nod to her own viral 2021 AMC cinema ad built around nearly identical language. Hargitay shot back that Kidman should let television have its moment, prompting a playful back-and-forth between the two before Hargitay returned to her script.

Beneath the jokes, Hargitay used her opening to reflect on her own path to Monday’s stage. She had spent the previous week collecting two additional Emmys for producing and directing “My Mom Jayne,” a documentary about her late mother, Jayne Mansfield, and she referenced advice from her friend Gloria Steinem about the value of telling one’s own story.

She closed the sentimental portion of her monologue by describing storytelling as a practice stretching back to humanity’s earliest gatherings around firelight, a theme that framed the ceremony even as the jokes about Wolf, Kidman and fellow honoree Martin Short kept the tone from tipping too far into solemnity.