The best thing about award shows is not watching the rich and famous become even more validated by winning trophies, or watching them tell us “who” they’re wearing.
It’s watching all of their painfully awkward moments that make the rest of us — for a fleeting moment — feel better about our own lives.
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Happy Fall, everybody — and what better way to start the season off, than with some good old-fashioned awkwardness.
The 71st annual Emmy Awards went down last weekend. So, naturally, there is a lot to report.
But one rather cringe-worthy moment stood out to us like a sore thumb and it needs to be discussed.
As you may already know, Jenny McCarthy hosted the Emmys red carpet this year.
Not everybody was happy about it.
Aside from Jenny being hellbent on making sure everybody knows she’s an anti-vaxxer (which has nothing to do with the Emmys, but still makes people angry), her hosting and interviewing skills were also brought into question.
In other words, they weren’t great.
Fans are particularly raising their eyebrows at Jenny’s interview with Christina Applegate.
Before I get into this, can we just pause and have a moment of appreciation for Christina Applegate?
Christina kicked off her career starring in the sitcom, “Married With Children” back in the ’90s.
She played the role of Kelly Bundy.
But since then, she’s been in a bunch of movies and TV shows that you would probably recognize her for as well.
Another one of her roles that springs to mind is the time she played Rachel’s sister, Amy, in “Friends”.
She is also in Bad Moms, Up All Night , and most recently, the Netflix sensation, Dead To Me .
So, yeah. She’s great.
I digress.
First of all, Jenny asked Christina what it was like to be nominated for her own show for the “first time”.
Christina awkwardly attempted to correct her, before giving up entirely saying: “We don’t have to talk about that”.
For the record, this is actually Christina’s 5th nomination.
Christina Applegate won an Outstanding Guest Actress Emmy in 2003 for her role on Friends , was nominated for the award again in 2004, and was up for Outstanding Lead Actress twice in 2008 and 2009 for her work on Samantha Who?
Then, just when you thought things couldn’t get more awkward…
Jenny tries to make things more relatable by bringing up Christina’s role in Married With Children .
But that backfired very quickly.
Jenny told Christina that she grew up watching “Married With Children” and wanted to be just like Christina when she was older.
Which probably would have been a fine thing to say excluding one very small, but very critical detail in this story…
Jenny McCarthy is 46 years old, and Christina Applegate is 47.
So, there’s really no way that Jenny could have grown up watching the show.
In fact, Jenny would have been 15 years old when the show started airing in 1987 , and Christina would have been 16.
Jenny also called her “sweetheart.”
Based on her reaction, I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that she was not too pleased with the use of the pet name.
Christina’s face really told us everything we needed to know. She is not having it.
I mean, she is really not hiding her emotions well. If this isn’t the expression of someone that’s fuming inside, I don’t know what is.
Honestly, this is the same face I make when I’m out running errands with no makeup on, in my sweatpants, and I run into someone from high school that stops and tries to have a conversation with me.
Nothing but inner rage.
Twitter went off, obviously.
Everyone was trying to figure how the hell Jenny figured she wanted to be like Christina when she grew up even though they’re practically the same age.
Some people literally had to stop watching the Emmys red carpet altogether after hearing that comment.
Tbh, same. It was too cringe to bear any longer.
Others questioned whether or not Jenny perhaps had a few too many cocktails before hitting the red carpet.
It would explain a lot .
Let us know what you think of Jenny McCarthy’s red carpet interview with Christina Applegate!
People were not here for it.
And they definitely did not hold back on their opinion of Jenny’s credentials as both a figure of medical advice and also as an interviewer.
The anti-vax jokes didn’t stop there.
This Twitter user had a light hearted suggestion for getting Jenny off the red-carpet interviews based on her penchant for avoiding vaccines.
It wasn’t just Jenny who got some serious shade thrown on them from Christina.
Giuliana Rancic from E! asked if Christina wanted to give a shout-out to her daughter who was watching at home, and Christina responded that she probably wasn’t watching E, “because, you know.”
Of course, she probably didn’t mean for it to be so shady.
She may have just meant that since her daughter is only 8 years old, she’s likely watching on a kid-friendlier channel. It didn’t really come off that way though.
People on Twitter felt like Christina kind of ruled the red carpet.
So maybe we should be grateful to Jenny McCarthy for providing such an awkward interview that Christina could use to propel herself into savage territory.
For her part, Jenny didn’t seem too broken up about it.
She shared this photo from the end of her red carpet section of the show, and if she realized she’d fumbled Christina Applegate’s interview then she definitely wasn’t showing it.
And Christina definitely came out on top.
As one Twitter user wrote, “My new biggest fear is Christina Applegate humiliating me on the red carpet” but honestly, that’s my newest life goal.