Emmys "scandal" reaches its natural death point as Quinta Brunson crashes Jimmy Kimmel Live! monologue
Everyone is friends, and nobody is mad about it, and we can all move on with our lives
In what we can only take as a clear gesture of good sportsmanship, good humor, and good “You both have shows on this Disney-owned network and everyone involved is going to smile about that, god damn it,” Abbott Elementary star and creator Quinta Brunson “crashed” Jimmy Kimmel Live! tonight, claiming back a little more of that Emmy time Kimmel usurped from her at the big awards show on Monday night.
You remember: Kimmel, fully committed to a bit/literally hogging the spotlight, played dead on the ground on the stage while Brunson accepted her award for Outstanding Writing For A Comedy Series. As a number of observers—including Brunson’s co-star and co-winner, Sheryl Lee Ralph—noted, it was a move that, regardless of what you thought of it as a comedy piece, undeniably pulled focus from Brunson’s first win, forcing her accomplishment to literally share space with the famous white guy doing nothing to get all that free attention.
Anyway, Live!’s Twitter account would like you to know there are no hard feelings, tweeting out a picture tonight of Brunson on the show’s set, Emmy in hand, front and center, with everybody being the goodest sports that they can be about the whole thing.
Brunson has, of course, addressed all this already, offering praise to Kimmel—calling him “one of her comedy godfathers” for his early support of Abbott—in the immediate aftermath of the moment. (She also alluded to her appearance on Kimmel this week, with Abbott Elementary coming back for its sophomore season next week.) We haven’t seen the actual content of Brunson’s “interruption” yet, but we’re going to go ahead and assume it’s going to trend closer to “We’re all in on the joke, right?” and not “Award-winning TV creator beats Jimmy Kimmel to death for real this time with her Emmy.”
Update, 10:14 p.m.: She did not beat him to death with her Emmy. (Brunson comes out at about the 11-minute mark of the below video; you’re welcome for saving you the scan-through.) Instead, she gave the full acceptance speech she would have given on Monday. It was pretty sweet!