Nobody has a bad word to say about this year’s Emmy Awards host, Nate Bargatze. This is by design. The 46-year-old comedian has become one of the hottest properties in stand-up by studiously avoiding the divisive, rage-inducing topics that most other contemporary comedians find themselves drawn towards, like moths to a trans joke. He avoids profanity as carefully as he avoids controversy, carefully expelling even the hint of vulgarity from his family-friendly sets.
Online, he is unquestionably best known for a Saturday Night Live skit he performed while hosting the show in October 2023. Bargatze didn’t even write “Washington’s Dream,” the work of SNL regulars Mikey Day and Streeter Seidell, but it made perfect use of his deadpan, folksy delivery and his eye for skewering everyday absurdities. In the sketch, Bargatze donned a powdered wig to play George Washington rallying his troops in the Revolutionary War with inspiring words about choosing “our own systems of weights and measures” and ditching British spellings. “One day, if we are brave, we will get rid of the ‘u’ in a lot of British words like color and armor,” he tells his men. “But by God, we will keep the British ‘u’ in the word glamour!” The clip has been viewed over 16 million times on YouTube, and was called “the best SNL sketch in years” before spawning a sequel.
When it was first announced that Bargatze would host that episode of SNL, the news was greeted with more than a few raised eyebrows. In fact, it’s unlikely he would have even landed the gig if it hadn’t been for the then-ongoing actor’s strike. When he took the stage, he opened his monologue by saying: “Look, I’m as shocked as you are that I’m here.” At the time, Bargatze was considered a “midtier” stand-up comedian, but he’d built a reputation as a safe pair of hands and was ready to grasp the opportunity when it came to him. In the years since that first SNL appearance, his career has skyrocketed. He’s just extended his ongoing arena tour, and his recent Netflix special, Your Friend, Nate Bargatze, has been nominated both for Outstanding Variety Special and Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special at the upcoming Emmys.
Unlike the Golden Globes, which has recruited comics like Ricky Gervais and Nikki Glaser to roast celebrities and lend their show some edge, the Emmys have generally tended to steer closer to the middle of the road. Last year, the night was hosted by beloved Schitt’s Creek father-son duo Eugene and Dan Levy, who kept things relatively tame. The Associated Press described the pair as “gentle hosts,” and Eugene’s knowing dig at The Bear was about as close to a vicious mauling as they got. “I love the show, and I know some of you will be expecting us to make a joke about whether The Bear is really a comedy,” said the American Pie star. “But in the true spirit of The Bear, we will not be making any jokes.”
Bargatze is expected to deliver more in that vein. During an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in June, he joked in reference to his upcoming hosting gig that he wasn’t sure if he would be required to watch all the nominated shows. “I guess I’ll just do what I do,” he told Colbert. “I’m very self-deprecating. I’ll try to bring it inward. I know it’s a tough thing, when [everybody’s] up for all these awards, but I want everybody to have a good time. I’ll try to make it lively and fun… and I’ll make fun of me.”
The Nashville-born comedian has been making fun of himself for as long as he can remember, and never seems to run short of material. He grew up as the son of a professional clown, an experience that inspired the name of his 2012 debut comedy album Yelled At By a Clown. His family are devoutly Christian, which perhaps helps explain his lifelong aversion to vulgarity or dirty jokes. “I grew up watching clean comedy. Starting out, I wanted my parents to come watch me,” he told Vulture in 2015. “I still think that way, even though I’m a parent now. I’m a clean comic, but I don’t really want people to notice it.”
It was while working for a water company in Tennessee that Bargatze first decided to pursue a career in comedy. He quit his job in 2002 at the age of 23 and moved to Chicago to enroll with improv troupe Second City, before leaving to focus on stand-up. He had stints in New York and Los Angeles and slowly but surely built a career as a touring road comic. A major breakthrough came with his appearance on Netflix series The Standups in 2017, but a planned sitcom based on his life in 2019 wasn’t picked up after the pilot episode. Nevertheless, his star continued to rise, and next year he’ll star opposite Mandy Moore in a film he co-wrote himself, The Breadwinner, about a man who becomes a stay-at-home dad after his wife lands a deal on Shark Tank.
If that sounds a long way from the endless cycle of topical rage-bait that the algorithm generally likes to fill our feeds with, that’s very much the point. Bargatze’s comedy isn’t concerned with either commenting on or generating headlines. Instead, it’s about quietly pointing out that for all that divides the red states and the blue, we have a lot more in common. It’s a recipe that makes him the man of the hour for the Emmys, and for America, too.
