LOS ANGELES — The agent remained unthanked. So did the family, and actually everyone else, when Merritt Wever won best supporting actress in a comedy series.
In fact, Wever, of Showtime’s “Nurse Jackie,” spoke so briefly that we can report the entire thing here: “Thank you so very much. Um, I gotta go, bye.”
Wever said backstage she made a quick exit when she realized she was about to cry. She added she wished she had given a shoutout to her show’s star, Edie Falco.
Still, her brief words were a hit with the Emmy audience — and the show’s host, Neil Patrick Harris.
“Merritt Wever, best speech ever,” Harris said.
Upon being introduced by Michael Douglas and Matt Damon, the stars of HBO’s Emmy-winning Liberace biopic “Behind the Candelabra,” Sir Elton John spoke both of the performer’s influence and his great dress sense.
Then he added, “What I was not aware of years later was his lifestyle.”
And then came the punch line: “Yeah, right.”
Noting the longevity of Liberace’s career, John added, “What a difference those 25 years have made to people like me … and me.”
The inclusion of young “Glee” actor Cory Monteith among individual salutes at the Emmy Awards was a tough topic on the red carpet.
Monteith, who was 31 when he died in July of a drug overdose, was chosen by show producers over such veteran actors and Emmy nominees as Larry Hagman of “Dallas,” Charles Durning of “Evening Shade” and Jack Klugman of “The Odd Couple.”
“Cory had a very special place in our cultural history this year,” said Mayim Bialik of “The Big Bang Theory.” “It’s such a hard thing to handle either way. Different people are honored for different reasons.”
He might play a pompous you-know-what on “The Colbert Report,” but Stephen Colbert just might win this year’s prize for the most romantic shoutout to a spouse by an Emmy winner.
In his own way, of course.
As he collected the first of his two Emmys, Colbert thanked his wife, Evelyn, or “Evie,” for being “so cruel and sexy.”
Colbert also gave a shoutout, albeit not as romantic, to another partner of sorts — Jon Stewart of “The Daily Show,” thanking him for “setting the standard and giving us inspiration.”
