Nate Bargatze kind of thought studios would get in on his Boys & Girls Club Emmy's bit

"If someone was giving these long speeches, I just thought they could be like, ‘and Netflix is gonna cover my overage.'"

By William Hughes | September 24, 2025 | 6:22pm

Nate Bargatze, Screenshot: Netflix Is A Joke/YouTube

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Nate Bargatze kind of thought studios would get in on his Boys & Girls Club Emmy's bit

As viewers of the ceremony know, first-time Emmy’s host Nate Bargatze came up with a novel (if mildly controversial) method to get award recipients to cut their acceptance speeches short at this year’s show: Every second winners went over their allotted 45-second window, Bargatze would deduct a thousand dollars from a planned $100,000 donation he intended to make to the Boys & Girls Club Of America. As viewers of the show also know, the gesture backfired from a couple of different angles. Reviewers of the show weren’t wild about seeing that kind of social pressure applied to getting winners to wrap it up more quickly—overages might irritate CBS, the network airing the show, but a lot of folks like the speeches. But also, it essentially failed as a deterrent: By the end of the night, the number was actually more than $50,000 in the hole, which caused CBS to step in and cover the original $100,000 donation, while Bargatze pledged another $250,000 of his own money.

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Which wasn’t exactly how it was supposed to go down, according to an appearance that the comic made on his own Nateland podcast this week. Saying he “almost sent an email out” ahead of the show to try to explain his intent, Bargatze says he initially envisioned the studios stepping up—or being encouraged to step up by their stars—to cover when talent overran their time. “If someone was giving these long speeches, I just thought they could be like, ‘and Netflix is gonna cover my overage,'” Bargatze explained, saying it would have allowed stars to “Go long, but then be a hero.”

To be clear, Bargatze isn’t complaining about having to pony up himself: He’s one of the most successful stand-ups on the planet, with Billboard estimating that he’s made something north of $80 million from touring alone. (He did, after all, end up donating significantly more than he initially said he would at the outset of the show, basically just to give the whole thing a feel-good ending.) In the podcast, he seems more lightly annoyed that nobody else was on his wavelength with the bit, even while asserting that both CBS and audiences at home enjoyed the concept.