Jimmy Kimmel Will Return to Host the 2020 Emmys

The show must go on, and Jimmy Kimmel has volunteered to host it. After previously emceeing the Primetime Emmy Awards in 2012 and 2016, Kimmel will return for the third time to host (as well as executive produce) the 2020 Emmys, one year after 2019’s host-free ceremony. 

Kimmel’s return might offer some familiarity to the telecast, but this year’s awards event will probably still look a lot different than the Emmys of the past. While the show is scheduled to air on ABC on Sunday, Sept. 20, we do not yet know whether the ceremony will be a virtual affair due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The show’s organizers have already made been forced to make some adjustments to their events; the Television Academy previously announced that the Creative Arts Emmys would be going virtual this year.

Not one to mince words, Kimmel addressed the general confusion in a tweet, writing, “I don’t know where we will do this or how we will do this or even why we are doing this, but we are doing it and I am hosting it.” 

I don’t know where or how or even why we are doing this, but we are and I am hosting it! The 72nd #Emmy Awards – Sunday, September 20th on @ABCNetwork @TelevisionAcad

— Jimmy Kimmel (@jimmykimmel) June 16, 2020

Nominations for this year’s Emmys are set to be announced on Tuesday, July 28, and more details about the telecast will be revealed closer to Emmys night, but we can all probably start taking bets on how the producers will go about playing people off “stage” when their Zoom acceptance speeches go on for a little too long.

The Emmys news comes after this week’s news that the 2021 Oscars, originally set to air, have been pushed to April 25, 2021. This is our first real taste of how the entertainment industry will start to deal with a post-coronavirus world, and we’re likely to see even more tweaks being made as Hollywood begins to reopen in the coming months.

  Jimmy KimmelPhoto: Kevin Winter/Getty Images