That Taylor Swift cameo at the Emmys was actually filmed on the Law & Order: SVU set, by the way.
After Monday night’s telecast of the 78th Emmy awards, producers Jesse Collins, Dionne Harmon and Jeannae Rouzan-Clay joined NBCUniversal’s EVP of Live Events & Specials Jen Neal to break down the biggest moments from the show, including Swift’s surprise, if pre-recorded, appearance.
The network went into the night making a splash by hiring Hargitay as the first woman to host the ceremony in 15 years. Naturally, she called upon several of her very equally famous friends for the occasion, spoofed her own show, and even sang.
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Here, the producers explain what worked in their favor during a show that saw several broken records, including for Widow’s Bay (which won a historic number of trophies for a comedy series in a single year) and welcomed many of Hargitay’s personal friends to the Emmys TV stage.
The SVU sketch. Obviously, Hargitay hosting TV’s biggest night on her home network meant the broadcast was bound to include a Law & Order: SVU nod. Audiences were treated to much more than that when the eventual sketch included one of the most famous people on the planet. That’s right, the SVU sketch largely centered around why Taylor Swift would not attend the Emmys.
“Everyone who tuned in thought, ‘What will be the SVU thing? If you’re gonna do it, I think everyone in this room, we all felt like you have to one up what everyone’s thinking, and I can’t think of anything better than to throw Taylor in an SVU sketch,” Rouzan-Clay said. “No one saw that coming, and if you’re going to have a nod to SVU, that seemed like the coolest way to do it. And they solved the crime, just like they always do.”
While the pop singer was nominated in several categories last weekend for her Eras Tour: The Final Show, it’s quite clear that Hargitay called in a favor by having Swift appear in a pre-recorded sketch with her during the primetime broadcast. Swift was actually supporting husband Travis Kelce at the Kansas City Chiefs season opener against the Denver Broncos on Monday night.
“I think it was always in the first meeting, we wanted to come up with something for Taylor to do, and Mariska’s writing team was just brilliant, and they came up with a couple of ideas, and that was an idea that Taylor responded to,” Collins said.
He says the scene was actually shot on the SVU set in New York City in late August, and it was Swift’s idea to bring her cat (named after Hargitay’s character Olivia Benson): “Last minute, Taylor’s idea, like the night before, she’s like, ‘What if I put the cat in the scene? That would be awesome, right?’ And so we did it. And the cat delivered, and so it was just great.”
As for how they kept it a secret for nearly a month? They kept the circle of trust small, Collins said.
“We made a promise to Taylor that we would keep it under wraps,” he said, adding: “You make a promise to Captain Benson [or her friends], you gotta keep it.”
Swift’s one request. In return for appearing in the Emmys SVU sketch, Swift apparently had one single request. Those Easter Eggs? They’re real.
“She had some thoughts, and we worked that in,” Collins revealed. When pressed for more, Rouzan-Clay cryptically said: “The Easter Eggs, she wanted them to be really official.”
They are surely referring to when Swift turned to the camera and said: “Saccharide, Ares, from the vineyard, north or south.”
“The Swifties will solve the Easter Eggs,” laughed Harmon.
Mariska Hargitay gets an A+. Despite some mixed reviews on the show overall, it’s hard to deny Hargitay’s ability to draw star power to the Emmys stage. It’s a stage you might think needs little help attracting stars, and yet there’s nearly no other circumstance where someone like Swift or Knicks point guard Jalen Brunson might’ve participated in the spectacle.
“That was the beauty of Mariska hosting was just everybody wanted to come play with her,” Collins said. “She was able to work with the team to come up with ideas that would make people comfortable after they said yes.”
Neal added that she not only attracts a broad TV audience, but she also has an expansive celebrity network to draw upon.
“Mariska’s had such a great year and has so many connections with Jalen and Taylor and all the people in Hollywood, with that happening in pop culture this year. So it was really just a dream for us to work with her to appeal to this broad audience,” she said. “She really has something for everyone and is broadly, broadly beloved. So we’re really thrilled to work with her.”
She kind of did steal her writer’s room from Stephen Colbert. The late-night host joked during the show that he was loaning his writers to the actress and host for the night, and he honestly wasn’t far off. Ariel Dumas was hired as the head writer for this year’s Emmy writers room, and she also served as the head writer for Late Night with Stephen Colbert. And, to be fair, they won an Emmy, too.
“We did a fairly large search looking for the perfect head writer for Mariska, and Ariel just was it,” Collins said. “She put together a great team, all New York writers who were willing to just work at SVU, which we’re all fans.
You didn’t hallucinate the hair transformation. “There was a lot of effort to construct the show so that she could go from the long to the short [hair],” Collins said. “Yes, you can go back and watch. It was exactly like 19 minutes to get from one to the other.”
Of the host’s glam for the night, Harmon continued: “Listen, there was an entire document. Yes, there was a document that had the outfits, that had the corresponding hair looks for each one. It was very specific, very intentional. Her and her glam team were super on top of it.”
They thought about SVU: The Musical. While the prevailing SVU sketch during Monday night’s Emmy awards was not a musical number, the producers did think about it. And, regardless, Hargitay still showed off her vocal chops.
“I mean, she really, really worked hard on that song,” Collins said. “A lot of vocal sessions recorded in New York. She [also] did some more work on it in L.A., like really perfecting it. I mean, this is one of the hardest working hosts I’ve ever seen on any of the shows.”
To illustrate that point, he continued: “We shot that opening piece… we shot one scene in New York and two full days in L.A. One on Thursday after the press conference. We came here. She started shooting at around two in the afternoon, and we left the plaza at 12:30 [in the morning]…the work that she put in was unparalleled.”
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Is she rehired? TBD on whether Hargitay gets the gig again. Unlike the Oscars, the Emmys change TV networks on an annual basis. No host network has been announced for 2027, but NBCU is clearly happy to have Hargitay sign on again next time the network is up to host.
“She can do what she wants to do,” Neal said. “She’s so wildly talented, and we were just thrilled with how she was tonight, and through the process leading up to, and who she is for the NBC family.”
Honoring Dolly Parton. The late, great cultural icon received her own tribute at Monday night’s ceremony, with Sally Field and Reba McEntire remembering their old friend. Collins says McEntire chose the song she would perform, and she was gifted with one of Parton’s rings to wear for the occasion.
“We were fortunate enough for Reba to agree,” he said. “She’s shooting her show right now, but she made time to shoot it, and she’s like, ‘This is a song that she would like to sing.’ It’s a beautiful story behind that record.”
The in memoriam. The producers said that Noah Kahan was an early choice for the in memoriam tribute, which saw him perform Paul Simon’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”
“We worked with him in July on another show,” Neal said, referring to NBC and Macy’s Fourth of July special. “He was incredible, and he was really, really great. We only got to have him on a pre-tape for that show, and so we thought he was the perfect voice for this, and he really delivered.”
Before they booked Kahan, they’d already settled on Simon’s record for the moment. Collins added: “When we were thinking that record, and we went and listened to his album, we’re like, ‘Oh, he’s gonna make this his own.’ He already was a big fan of that song, and it doesn’t hurt that he’s selling out stadiums. He’s had a big year.”
On ending a minute early. This year’s ceremony caught some early slack for cutting a few categories from the primetime broadcast and instead relegating them to the non-televised ceremonies over Labor Day weekend. But, it looks like it largely worked out in NBC’s favor. If you can believe, the Emmys ended a minute early this year — and at one point, they actually had to fill time, because the show was running nearly six minutes ahead. So what do you do when you have the rare luxury (and maybe pain??) of trying to fill time during an awards show?
“You book Woody [Harrelson] and Matthew [McConaughey], right?” says Collins of the last presenters of the night, who did seemingly get to riff more than they might’ve under other circumstances. “And you just know that they’re gonna do what they do.”
Added Harmon: “It gave Mariska some time to have some fun too and breathe with some of those moments, and we didn’t have to rush people off the stage. It was really nice.”
And yeah, they did also beg honorees to keep their speeches to a minimum. From Collins: “Well, we went out to every nominee saying that we have 45 seconds, and there’ll be a clock right away. People respected it. It still drifted a little bit, but we knew we were doing good on time, and I think the room just had a great energy. At least that’s what it felt like from where we were, and so I think it just all came together.”
Things to change for next time? “I think we should have given Mariska more dancers,” Collins laughed.
