Liberal Hollywood is naked and afraid

More specifically, it might tell us something about the state of liberal Hollywood – America’s dream factory, the perennially enraging idée fixe of what we must now call the Maga establishment, and by extension what remains of the Democratic opposition. And if we were to give that state its own show, then that show would be Naked and Afraid.

“Doug,” my wife, a proud and excited nominee, said to our delightful driver, “do you know where you’re going?”

“Not ... uh,” admitted Doug, “not really.”

Doug wasn’t kidding. He knew his way around a car, undoubtedly, but Los Angeles not so much. He gave the strong impression that he was filling in last-minute for someone who did this for a living.

“Which ... uh ... which way to the red carpet?” became Doug’s mantra to every authority figure we passed in downtown LA, from traffic cop to building site foreman to a delighted but unhelpful priest.

Doug had every right not to prioritise the importance of the day, but it quickly became clear that he wasn’t alone. From the guys who were responsible for herding the heroic seat fillers (one harassed gentleman who breathlessly took his seat a second before Bryan Cranston strode on stage to announce the winner of outstanding talk series complained to me: “I’m an audience member! But this guy with an earpiece told me to hurry and get up and come sit by you. So I did!”), to the refreshments (a mini-mart in the foyer, charging $18 for entry, payable to a no-nonsense gatekeeper by credit card, was the easiest way to come by a drink), there was a general sense that the cosseting of this demographic, even on their night of celebration, was over.

As with most pampered and progressive enclaves in America, the winds of change were blowing through the entertainment industry, and it felt particularly draughty in the Peacock Theater.

On stage, things started warmly enough. Our MC was Nate Bargatze, a popular comedian from red-state Tennessee with a reputation for working clean and being a devout Christian. He began the evening by announcing that he had personally donated $100,000 to the Boys & Girls Clubs of America (BGCA). We clapped appreciatively. Ah but, he added, for every second that a winner went over their allotted 45 seconds in their thank you speeches, the Boys and Girls would lose $1,000.

Oh wow, we thought. OK.

If, however, they went under time, every second would gain them an extra $1,000.

Ah! Fun, we giggled. Fun. Right?

There was JB Smoove from Curb Your Enthusiasm, alumnus of the BGCA, with two telegenic young Boys and Girls, who would, presumably, personally gain by this no doubt handsome donation.

But even then there was a creeping sense that this wasn’t going to end well. Indeed, there was a creeping sense that maybe this wasn’t even intended to end well. The Boy and Girl stood on stage throughout, right next to the garrulous nominees, becoming increasingly Dickensian symbols of need. Sure enough, as winner after winner celebrated the ecstatic high point of their professional lives, one by one, like lemmings falling off an oratorical cliff, they went over their allotted time.

As they spoke and wept and just quickly mentioned who they really had to thank, the automated money clock in the theatre ran inexorably down. The smiles of the Boy and Girl became braver and braver. “I’ll make the money up myself!” shouted Hannah Einbinder, winner of best supporting actress for Hacks. But by the time we got to Seth Rogen’s umpteenth award for The Studio (“meh, we already fucked over the Boys and Girls so I’m just gonna keep going...”) the charitable total was in the red. It was in the red a long way. It was in the red, to be precise, to the tune of $60,000. That’s right: an overdraft.

That’s $160,000 that those narcissistic Hollywood assholes took from kids in need, you could almost hear Middle America shouting. They couldn’t even shut their big mouths for charity!

The Boy and Girl looked on, still smiling gamely, but by now transmitting a sense that they were unwitting props in an adult game they weren’t sure if they were supposed to find funny.

No one wants showbiz egos to run unchecked. But by the same token, no one wants children in need to lose out because winners of an award they had spent a lifetime striving for took more than 45 seconds to express something about it.

What exactly was going on here?

Perhaps the answer to that can be found in what felt like the most cathartic and also the most unsatisfying award of the night. When Bryan Cranston read Stephen Colbert’s name on the list of nominees for best talkshow, the vast auditorium broke into cheering so loud it felt like something hungry and primal had finally been released. He hadn’t even been announced as the winner yet, but, in a moment that felt unprecedented, Cranston simply held on that devotional roaring of the audience – Stephen! Stephen! Stephen! Here we were, finally, in all our old-school Hollywood liberalism – naked, yes, and this time not a whit abashed.

In July, CBS fired Colbert and cancelled his No 1-rated Late Show after the host described a $16m settlement between CBS’s parent company, Paramount, and Donald Trump on air as “a big fat bribe”. A persistently astringent critic of the Trump administration, Colbert also pointed out the timing of the settlement at the moment that Paramount was merging with Skydance, a company owned by the son of Trump ally and the World’s Richest Man This Week (Probably), Larry Ellison. And which network was devising and broadcasting these Emmys? Yes, CBS.

But here at last was our champion, and his moment – our moment – had finally come!

Eventually, Cranston opened the envelope, called the name we had all been shouting, and we were all on our feet as the Sacrificial Lamb of Late Night made his way to the stage. Anticipating the rallying cry of resistance that perhaps we suddenly realised we had all come there for, we settled back into our seats to hear what he had to say – no, what he had to eviscerate.

I secretly hoped he would slip the Boy and Girl a fat cheque and some gummy bears and take all the sweet time he needed.

And really, it was a lovely speech. Sure, he thanked CBS immediately, which in the moment felt classy, rather than cowed. And he concluded by saying he had wanted to make his show about love, but realised it was in fact about loss. “You only truly know how much you love something when you get a sense that you might be losing it ... I have never loved my country more desperately ... God bless America!” Wistful, yes. Elegiac, yes. Moving, quite. Barn-burning, defiant, a speech to rally an opposition around? Not exactly.

Of course Boys & Girls Clubs of America and JB Smoove weren’t going to have to find $60,000 to pay back Bargatze. The host tossed in another $250,000 and the host’s host, CBS, another $100,000. So they at least came out looking generous.

To be clear, I don’t think this was a conspiracy to make people in showbiz look greedy and selfish. It just felt like that. In a time when talkshow hosts that take anti-Trump views are being openly taken off air these moments just inevitably start to feel more sinister. On Wednesday, Jimmy Kimmel would be “suspended indefinitely” on the prompting of Trump-appointee Brendan Carr, chairman of the broadcasting watchdog, for saying that Maga was making political capital out of the murder of Charlie Kirk. Things look scarier in the dark.

The show was over and the stars, the agents, the publicists and the men and women who keep the dream factory running moved in a great mass back out into the night and across the street to the Governors Ball. We shuffled along, like a vast army of black tuxedo-ed ants, or tottered on uncomfortable heels, and passed a line of overflowing refuse bins.

As we moved slowly in our herd, regathering what remained of our glamour for the parties ahead of us, their tang hung sickly sweet in the warm Californian air.

Jonathan Cake is an actor, writer and host of the podcast Stage Door Jonny

Photograph by Valerie Macon/AFP via Getty Images