Jimmy Kimmel on virtual Primetime Emmys ceremony: "We’ve had no choice but to reinvent it. I mean, everything is different"

Variety

Kimmel -- who took the summer off from his late-night show to travel to Idaho with his family via a rented Winnebago -- is now in Emmy prep mode for the Sept. 20 ceremony at the Staples Center. “They picked the biggest possible venue for the smallest possible show,” Kimmel tells Variety. “We’re doing the show from no place to no one. We’re going to be handing out the awards remotely, and I hope that we get to see some excitement from inside the house — people’s families. I hope it’s not the typical ‘Sit in front of your monitor, with a carefully selected assortment of books behind you’ situation. I hope that people’s families are going crazy when they win.” Kimmel says he expects to have some celebrities in attendance at the Staples Center, but he emphasizes that the ceremony will be almost entirely "live." “There’s not going to be a lot of pre-tapes,” he says. “We’ve determined that that’s more trouble than it’s worth. The show will be mostly what we do that night. I think if we try to do what we’ve done in the past, we’re going to fail.” Kimmel adds: “We’ve had no choice but to reinvent it. I mean, everything is different. I think the key for me is to have fun with the limitations. Make the negatives into positives and these things that we all have to do when we go into work now. … You know, everyone says, ‘These award shows are all the same.’ And this one is definitely not going to be the same.”