Drew Barrymore is not hosting the 2023 MTV Movie & TV Awards! The Hollywood actress and daytime talk show personality has taken the big decision just three days before the award show.
Barrymore was supposed to take over the stage at the Barker Hangar on May 7 for MTV’s annual awards. Keep scrolling further to find out the reason behind Drew Barrymore’s decision to not host the 2023 MTV Movie & TV Awards.
Drew Barrymore steps down as host of MTV Movie & TV Awards
Drew won’t be hosting the 2023 MTV Movie & TV Awards in a show of support and solidarity with members of Writers Guild of America who enacted a strike earlier this week on Tuesday. It seems like this year, the award show will take place without a host.
The 50 First Dates star has also mentioned that she will host the MTV Movie & TV Awards in 2024. It has been revealed that she will still appear in a few pre-recorded segments during this year’s broadcast. According to Variety, the red carpet portion of the event has been canceled. So, there will be no interviews before the award show.
In a statement issued, the talk show host said, “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.”
Barrymore went on to say, “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.”
She ended her statement by saying, “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.”
What did MTV Movie & TV Awards executive producer Bruce Gillmer, have to say about Drew’s decision?
While having a chat with Variety, Bruce Gillmer, the president of music, music talent, programming and events at Paramount Global, and an executive producer of the MTV Movie & TV Awards spoke about the whole matter and said, “Drew, without question, she’s been incredible. It’s hard to imagine that we’ve ever had a better experience with a host.”
Gillmer further added, “She’s more of a partner really, she’s in it every day, just super passionate and super engaged and creative. She even bought some of her own team along for the journey. So when this all reared its head, we started to prepare for what could be. She is not surprisingly, standing in solidarity with the writers, which we have full respect for. She has our full support.”
He continued, “So she’s not going to be with us live in the house for the show and we will essentially be going hostless. The silver lining in all of this is that we really formed a partnership almost a family-like atmosphere. So we see this as a shift in direction, but also a pause for the initial plan, which we’ve all agreed and she’s accepted to continue as our host in 2024.”
Bruce stated that he’s still waiting to learn the names of presenters and nominees who will attend the award show. This year, The White Lotus actress star Jennifer Coolidge is ready to receive the ‘Comedic Genius’ award at the MTV Awards. He mentioned that the producers are still trying to figure out how to open the show. As of now, they have a pre-tape bit featuring Barrymore which can be used.
The show also plans to find a way through which they can shed some light on what’s going on with the strike and why the show looks a bit different than originally planned. He said that the show won’t dwell on that and instead plans “on delivering for the fans.”
He continued, “The exclusive sneak peeks of the big films that are to be released. We still have a live performance. We still have the award sequences, although those are the elements that are very unpredictable — because clearly we don’t know which talent will feel comfortable. A lot of them won’t.”
Bruce said, “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.”
He added, “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.”
Here’s all you need to know about the 2023 MTV Movie & TV Awards
This year, the MTV Movie and TV Awards will be held at the Barker Hangar in Los Angeles on Sunday, May 7. The awards take place every year to honor films as well as television shows.
You can simply catch the award show on MTV and it will be available to watch in more than 170 countries. In March 2023, Drew announced that she will be hosting the award show this year. Sadly, now she won’t take on the emcee duties in solidarity with the striking Writers Guild members.
As per US Weekly, this time, MTV has combined the scripted and unscripted portions of the awards show in 1 event. Fans from all over the world can tune in to the show on their respective MTV channel.
Are you looking forward to the 2023 MTV Movie & TV Awards? Kindly let us know your thoughts in the comments section below. Don’t forget to stay tuned with us for the latest updates from the world of showbiz.
