Jimmy Kimmel delivers Emmys 2020 monologue to empty house

Jimmy Kimmel kicked off the 2020 Emmys ceremony Sunday night by talking to himself at the Staples Center in LA while the telecast played stock footage of crowds from previous years.
“Hello and welcome to the pand-Emmys,” he said. “You can’t have a virus without a host.”
The 52-year-old joked about the purpose of having an awards show during the coronavirus pandemic, of course, as ABC aired prior crowd shots.
“Why are we having an awards show in the middle of a pandemic and what the hell am I doing here?” he joked. “This is the year they decide to have a host?”
Eventually, ABC decided to show the reality of Kimmel speaking on stage alone to cardboard cutouts.

“I’m up here all alone just like prom night,” he said. “Of course I’m here all alone, of course we don’t have an audience. We took a page from baseball and got cardboard cutouts.”

While the seats were indeed filled with photos of the likes of Meryl Streep, the screen then panned over nominee Jason Bateman, who was seated alongside the 2D celebs.
Kimmel also made a myriad of generic 2020 jokes, including: “This has been a miserable year,” name dropping “zoom school” alongside “death.”
He then walked into a room where hundreds of celebrites’ livestream feeds were displayed on a major jumbotron, as DJ D-Nice played in the background.
“I feel like I’m in a Best Buy,” he joked. “You know how hard it is to get your parents to FaceTime? Multiply that by a lot.”
He also called out Emmy presenters, who will be wearing tuxedo hazmat suits to deliver Emmys to celebs in person.
“If you win, a guy will drive to your house and chuck the Emmy through your window,” he joked.

In the lead-up to the ceremony, executive producer Guy Carrington told The Post Kimmel could see the guests, who would be livestreamed to the set from 140 different feeds.
“He’ll be able to see, hear, talk to and interact with all the nominees from across the world beamed onto his set,” Carrington said. “A lot of the work we’ve been doing over the last few months is about facilitating all those 140 feeds coming into the Staples Center and working with the nominees and their representatives to make sure it’s a good connection — well-framed and nicely lit.”
“We don’t want the ceremony to feel like a video conference,” he added.
In fact, the unpredictability of the show would make it one to remember, he said.
“To some extent we’re leaning into the unpredictability of [the ceremony] because, as Jimmy says, we have no idea what’s going to happen — and that’s part of the fun,” Carrington said. “We’ll be prepared for pretty much any eventuality, but there will be something we’re not expecting.”