At the 2025 Emmys, host Nate Bargatze delivered what quickly became an all-time infamous bit from an awards show host. Suffice it to say, things didn’t exactly go how he’d planned — especially when it came to his own $250,000 donation to the Boys & Girls Club.
When it comes down to it, Bargatze said he could’ve explained the rules a bit better.
“I almost sent an email out,” he said on his “Nateland” podcast on Wednesday as he discussed the award show segment.
That unsent email ended up costing the comic-turned-Emmys-host hundreds of thousands of dollars in the fallout of a failed hosting bit. At the start of the night, Bargatze announced that he was pledging $100,000 to the Boys & Girls Club of America. For every second an acceptance speech went over 45 seconds, however, the host said he would take $1,000 from the pot, while every second under time would add $1,000.
“They ask you to come up with a way to make everybody go shorter. Comics, I don’t think, are good to ask that, because I will try to really find a solution,” Bargatze said. “CBS was amazing. They loved it. But like, some of the people that talked about it, you go, ‘Alright, so don’t find a solution.’ Like, you want to go, ‘Y’all don’t want any of this messed with. You want to do what you want to do.’”
“You go, ‘I found the most efficient way to handle it,’” Bargatze’s co-host Aaron Weber joked.
The bit, however, did not go to plan. While some speakers — particularly early in the night — felt the pressure of the ticking clock, the pot began to dwindle as the night went on. Not even the presence of young children from the Boys & Girls Club could effectively shorten speeches. By the end of the night, the donation was well in the red, with the Boys & Girls Club owing the Emmys more than $50,000 at the end of the night. Bargatze and CBS swooped in, with the comic pledging $250,000 of his own money and the network adding the initial $100,000.
“I thought it was going to be, you know, I don’t know, Netflix donation, or Apple, you know? The shows that won,” Bargatze said. “It’s not like I expected that kid to give money — which, I covered for that kid — but it’s like, I kind of thought that’s what would happen. In my head, I pictured it as they could then go long, but then be a hero. So it was like a win-win.”
The bit became a critical sore spot on Emmys night, with many reviews calling it, at best, a distracting element of the evening. Some audiences chafed against the truncated speeches from actors and creators finally getting recognition on the Emmys stage. The gag also brought up the renewed complaint that, while winners are always encouraged to speed through their speeches, presenter gags (which did not apply to Bargatze’s timer) are allowed to run rampant, often with unfunny results.
However, the gag obviously was not without its successes. Weber said that the Boys & Girls club was “flooded” with donations, both from the Emmys ceremony itself and from viewers at home.
“A lot of the reviews did not like the Boys & Girls Club thing,” Bargatze said. “It came from a real place of heart. That’s all I wanted. Everybody at home loved it. Everybody at home liked it. It was fun, it was entertaining seeing money go down and all this. I thought it would be a fun, I kind of, in my head, I wasn’t trying to put anybody on the spot, I wasn’t trying to make someone donate money, but in my head, I kind of thought like ‘Make it fun. Do what John Oliver did,’ where John Oliver like stuck it to me and made me have to pay more money.”
Bargatze made it clear that he did not intend to overshadow speeches, nor did he expect to let the Boys & Girls Club go home empty-handed. While he thinks the night overall was successful, he noted that he perhaps could’ve helped the bit along more smoothly.
“I don’t know if I just didn’t explain it enough in the room … they might not know enough about me, because they know me as a stand-up comedian, but I’m not around these people all the time. I don’t know, you know, so I think it just, I had it in my head one way, it kind of came out another way, but the reasoning was there. I wasn’t gonna give that money at the end. Like, I wasn’t thinking that I was gonna have to. But the way it went, I was like, I can’t, I’m not gonna not.”
You can listen to the full “Nateland” podcast episode in the video above.
