Emmys Add Live Trophy-Smashing Segment to Officially Break Its Own Records
Producers say the ceremony's decades-old ambition to 'break records' finally has a category, a stopwatch, and a very large broom.
The 78th Primetime Emmy Awards, hosted by Mariska Hargitay at the Peacock Theatre, closed its broadcast with a new tradition organizers are calling the Records Segment, in which two stagehands in safety goggles smashed a rack of freshly engraved statuettes against a padded riser while a certified adjudicator held a stopwatch.
The bit was pitched internally as a way to make the show's favorite phrase, "and tonight we're breaking records," literally true rather than aspirationally true, according to a person familiar with the run-of-show binder. Winners were informed they could keep the base of their trophy, which producers described as "still very much an Emmy, structurally."
"We wanted a moment audiences could point to and say, yes, that happened, a record was broken, physically, in front of us," said a spokesperson for the ceremony, before excusing themselves to go glue a wing back onto a statuette for the In Memoriam reel.
The Academy has not said whether the segment will return next year, only that whichever trophy shard travels farthest into the audience will be mounted separately and given its own For Your Consideration campaign.