Drew Barrymore is out as host of the MTV Movie and TV Awards this weekend.
The reason? She’s in sympathy with the Writers Guild strike.
Thus begins the real affects of the strike. If it continues into June, the next problem could be the Tony Awards. Will Ariana DeBose stay as host? Will presenters and performers balk at being on the show? And who will write it? Dave Boone, who’s written the Tonys for several years, is a member of the WGA.
So the MTV Awards will go without a host. I feel for the producers. That show is like herding cats to begin with. But the strike must be respected.
Barrymore said in a statement:
“I have listened to the writers, and in order to truly respect them, I will pivot from hosting the MTV Movie & TV Awards live in solidarity with the strike. Everything we celebrate and honor about movies and television is born out of their creation. And until a solution is reached, I am choosing to wait but I’ll be watching from home and hope you will join me. I thank MTV, who has truly been some of the best partners I have ever worked with. And I can’t wait to be a part of this next year, when I can truly celebrate everything that MTV has created, which is a show that allows fans to choose who the awards go to and is truly inclusive.”
The executive producer of the MTV show, Bruce Gillmer, told Variety the show will go on nonetheless.
“But we have a plan, since the award show is fan-voted, we want to honor the fans’ participation and also honor the talent that earn these awards. So we’ll be giving the awards away. We’re working on a plan on how to do that without the traditional presentation involved, should the talent or some of the talent not show. We’ve got backups to our backups. And we’re planning on keeping as many of the signature elements of the show intact. We will have a live audience and it will still be a live event. Different, with more pre-taped packages and so forth, which are scalable, but it’ll still have that live event feel.”
