MTV Movie & TV Awards scramble to make changes due to writers' strike

Last night's MTV movie and TV awards had some major changes from the original plan. The show was supposed to air live, but instead it was pre-tape. And that decision was made after our friend Drew Barrymore, with Drew as the show's host in solidarity with the Writers Guild of America. CBS and MTV are part of Paramount Global, we should tell you. And for more on this, we have Nigel Smith. He is the senior editor at People Magazine, where he covers films. Nigel, great to see you.

So who were the awards? Who were the big winners at the award show last night? Well, the big winners, Best Film went to Scream 6. And this is why I love this award show, because after the Oscars, after the SAG awards, after all these prestigious film award shows and TV shows, we have a film like Scream 6, which is a fan favorite, a genre film winning Best Film over a Best Picture nominee like Top Gun Maverick and Avatar, The Way of Water. So that was a big win for the movie. It also won Best Fight for the fight between Ghostface and Gail Weathers, Courtney Cox's character. And Ghostface actually pre-taped a segment in which he accepted the award for Best Film, saying, I guess you found your favorite scary movie, quoting Luke. And then we also had Top Gun Maverick winning Best Performer and Tom Cruise in Tom Cruise fashion, accepting the award live from a fighter jet. He was in the play with his popcorn in the back seat.

And Jennifer Coolidge, of course, won the Comedy Genius Award. She accepted her award and quoted Shakespeare and made a big plea to support the WGA and the writer strike. So speaking of the writer strike, we know that Drew Barrymore sort of withdrew herself as host in Solidarity of the Writers and they kind of had to read jig things. So, you know, clearly they weren't live, but how were things changed? And can we expect to see more of this sort of nimbleness in the future when it comes to some of these shows? Yeah, well, the show, if you watch it, kind of gave pandemic vibes, right? Well, they all had all those award shows go on during the worst of the pandemic. And Drew Barrymore, you know, was supposed to host the show for four months leading up to it. And so she did pre-tape a lot of funny bits. So she opened the show with a never been kissed throwback where she inserted her character into a bunch of movies and TV shows that were nominated.

And she also had a really, really funny Barbie spoof. So she did factor into the show, even though she didn't get to host it. But it was, you know, given that they literally had days to put this together because she just announced, I think it was last Thursday that she wasn't going to be hosting, they really had to scramble. And they had a lot of pre-tape segments. They had people accept their awards, pre-tapes and filmed things. A lot of celebrities took part, like Petra Pascal, Tom Cruise, as I mentioned, Jennifer Coolidge. So if you wanted to still get your star wattage and see a fun show, they did a pretty good job considering.

And as for whether this is going to be happening down the line, I mean, the last writer strike 15 years ago took place for around a hundred days. And the next live award show that would be impacted would be the Emmys, but that's not until September. So if things go according to, you know, what happened last time, then I think we'll be in better shape for the Emmy Awards. And so what are you hearing from just sources about the writer strike? I mean, are we anywhere closer to resolving or for the studios and the writers to resolve their issues? No. We're just hearing that it could probably, you know, go on for as long as the last writer strike, which I said was a hundred days. So studios have been preparing for this. The head of Paramount did say that, you know, they have shows lined up and they've been preparing for this given that they have some experience with the writer's strike.

And so, yeah, I think it's going to take a while. We're only a week into this and a lot of things have already been impacted. There was a premiere of the Michael J. Fox documentary that was supposed to take place last week and Michael wouldn't cross the picket line. So things are getting impacted in real time. Obviously the late night shows have been halted and the MTV movie awards as a result. Wow.

All right. Nigel Smith, thank you. Thank you for having me.

Hollywood, Los Angeles, MTV Video Music Awards, Writers Guild of America, Strike, Paramount, MTV, CBS News, U.S., Entertainment