Emmys will have reunions, recreations of shows like ‘Lucy,’ ‘Martin,’ ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ and ‘Thrones’
By Andrew Dalton, The Associated Press on January 11, 2024.
LOS ANGELES (AP) – The 75th Emmy Awards will be studded with cast reunions and recreations of classic moments from a dozen beloved shows throughout television history. “All in the Family,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Game of Thrones,” “Martin” and many more series will get the special treatment at Monday night’s ceremony at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles, with many getting renditions of their sets, including the bar from “Cheers.” “It was really about, how can we celebrate 75 years of television differently?” the show’s executive producer Jesse Collins told The Associated Press. The first such scene will come within the 10 minutes of host Anthony Anderson’s Emmys opening, and the moments will be spread throughout the Fox telecast. “The core of it,” said Dionne Harmon, another executive producer, “is really celebrating television and to honor the shows of yesterday while we honor the shows of today.” Collins, Harmon and Jeannae Rouzan-Clay from Jesse Collins Entertainment are producing the Emmys for the first time, after previously putting on the Oscars, American Music Awards and BET Awards. With the tribute segments they’re seeking to show decades of television in its full variety of styles, formats and periods. From the Emmys’ earliest days in the 1950s will come “I Love Lucy;” from the 1960s, “The Carol Burnett Show,” whose title star recently won her seventh Emmy at age 90; from the 1970s, “All in the Family,” whose legendary creator, TV legend Norman Lear, died last month at 101. “Cheers” will represent the ’80s. “Ally McBeal” and “Martin” will represent different sides of the ’90s. The television-game-changing “Sopranos” will show up from the early 2000s. Shows still on the air – “Grey’s Anatomy” and “American Horror Story” – will also be represented. Bits featuring “Saturday Night Live” and “The Arsenio Hall Show” will show up for variety and talk. “We just tried to pick ones that we felt like we could successfully pay tribute to,” Collins said. “We have a pretty vast array of comedies and procedural dramas and talk shows, just trying to touch all the different areas.” And the shows come from all four networks and HBO, a perennial Emmys juggernaut that this year has all three of the top nominated shows – “Succession,” “The Last of Us” and “The White Lotus,” – and was home to the winningest drama of all time, which is also among the classic shows getting honored. “We have a great ‘Game of Thrones’ moment,” Collins said. Producers didn’t give specifics on who will be appearing, and said not to expect everyone from every show. Reunions aren’t possible for all of them, of course. “I Love Lucy,” whose key cast members have all been dead for decades, will get a recreation by actors playing Lucy and Ethel. Other shows have few left to reunite. “All in the Family” only has two surviving major cast members, Rob Reiner and Sally Struthers. The same is true of “The Carol Burnett Show,” with only Burnett and Vicki Lawrence still alive. They also said not to expect a reunion of the cast of “Friends,” though the show will include some tribute to Matthew Perry, who died in October. Emmy producers said they tried to take a different approach to each of the segments to make sure it doesn’t start to feel like a repetitive trope. “We want to make sure people remain entertained and engaged so you never really know what you’re going to see, even with the reunions,” Rouzan-Clay told the AP. While wrangling multiple actors from different eras is never easy, and synching schedules was a tangled thicket as everyone became available again with the end of the writers and actors strikes that pushed the show from September to January, Emmy organizers didn’t have to twist many arms to get people to take part. “People are happy to be back and happy to celebrate,” Harmon said. “It is a monumental year. Everybody was really excited to come be a part of this.” 23-22
