On Tuesday, Las Culturistas Culture Awards, hosted by the actor-comedians Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers, will air on Bravo, but don’t let that fool you into thinking it’s a traditional awards show like the Oscars or the Grammys.
Yes, there are prizes. But the categories include Best Word to Whisper, the Creatine Award for Straight Male Excellence and the Eva Longoria Award for Tiny Woman, Huge Impact. A nominee for Record of the Year is Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing,” which came out in 1998. The concept was baffling to some people in Hollywood.
“This idea that this is an awards show that’s really a comedy special disguising itself as an awards show is a tougher pill to swallow for a lot more people than you’d realize,” Rogers said in a joint video interview with Yang in mid-July.
As a result, Yang added, they ended up recruiting a motley mix of Housewives, sketch comedians, musicians, and actors in a process that was “kind of anathema” to a typical awards show.
The Las Culturistas awards are an outgrowth of the popular podcast Rogers and Yang have been hosting since 2016 — before Yang was a star of “Saturday Night Live” and “Wicked” and before Rogers released a Christmas-themed special on Showtime. It’s a dishy chat fest that has recently drawn guests including Lady Gaga and Michelle Obama, all of whom are asked to give minute-long diatribes on things that frustrate them in a segment called “I Don’t Think So, Honey.” (Tina Fey told them they are getting too famous to share their real opinions about movies on the podcast.)
The awards show started in 2022 as a live event outdoors at Lincoln Center, featuring mostly their friends. For the scaled up, TV-ready version this year, the ceremony was filmed at the Orpheum Theater in Los Angeles last month. Jamie Lee Curtis cursed fondly at Allison Janney on the red carpet.
Rogers apologized for his sweaty complexion as the interview began. He had been rehearsing choreography. “We are preparing an opening number that will be high octane and will really set the tone I think for what people can expect in the show, which is chaos and revelry and more,” he said. After Yang joined, they discussed how their “silly bit” became a televised event.
These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
How did this awards show land at Bravo?
MATT ROGERS This is one of those stories of pitching it everywhere and one place wanted it seriously. I wouldn’t want it any other way because we’ve also been making references to Peacock as being mankind’s greatest streamer for years now because it’s where we spend 90 percent of our time watching “Housewives,” and now they’ve got all sorts of stuff on there.
BOWEN YANG Like, give it up for the Olympics, y’all.
In the past you’ve had people send in acceptance videos, including Cate Blanchett and Taylor Swift ——
ROGERS She can’t make it this year. We’re just going to say it flat out right now. No one expect any TS12 hints. There will be no Easter eggs. Let the dream of Taylor go on the “Culture Awards” for this year at least.
Well, I did want to ask about the process of getting celebrities to make appearances?
YANG Explaining this to people’s publicists has been …
ROGERS The biggest challenge.
YANG It’s like the movie “Arrival.” We speak in a circle and they speak in a straight line. I hope that this year it’s enough of a success that it breaks the mold and it creates this slightly new model for people’s teams to understand, “Oh, OK, so it’s an awards show, but it’s not the awards show that we normally have to deal with.”
ROGERS And by the way, we’re actually going to have one of the “Arrival” aliens onstage doing signing so that people from their planet can understand the show. We really want to reach them.
There are some returning categories like the Allison Williams Cool Girl Award but also some new additions. How long does it take to brainstorm them?
ROGERS It’s like a weird mixture of not long at all and long because I love Bowen’s brain, and he loves mine. So usually if I say something and Bowen laughs at it, or vice versa, that means it’s a thing. That’s when you can start to overthink it. How do we present Best Batman Woman? The overthinking happens in the detail process, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s incredibly simple. And maybe as dumb as you think, depending on how dumb you think we are.
Do you have a favorite category?
ROGERS Worst Sticky Feeling. I love Worst Sticky Feeling. I think it speaks to everyone in the world.
YANG Mine might be the Circus Award for Stop Being Weird.
ROGERS That’s a classic. I think that one might come back every year, to be honest with you.
YANG There’s just so many things in this world that you just want to go, “Stop being weird.” Starting with the circus itself, it’s like, “Well, why do you have to look like that?”
ROGERS By the way, lately it feels like more people will come up and they campaign. And I went to go see the revival of “Parade” the other night in L.A., and I’m standing there talking to one of the cast members after, and a woman came up and she said: “I’m so sorry. I just saw you. And I had to come up and say ——” and I was thinking she would say she loves the podcast. She goes, “We are really pulling for ‘Okay, shirt!!!!’ for Kindest Greeting.” I looked at her in the eyes and I was like, “I want you to know you have immeasurably impacted the chances for ‘Okay, shirt!!!!’ to win.”
You both attended the Oscars earlier this year. Did that give you any ideas?
YANG I think we lucked out in terms of that being the show that we got to attend, which was like: This is one of the best comedians ever, in my opinion, Conan O’Brien, giving you pure showmanship. Which is kind of what we always wanted. I think we are spoiled in terms of this version of hosting an award show.
I don’t know how Matt feels, but I’ve said this in the past to our people: “If we’re lucky enough to ever be asked to host anything quote-unquote more legitimate, I don’t think I would necessarily take the offer because it’s not going to be better than what we’re doing now.” There are going to be actual emotions involved. There will be institutional things to answer to. We get to do our version of it, and it’s all just this beautiful facsimile of what the thing is without the actual stakes of it.
ROGERS Also I really feel like a lot of these award shows have found the host that works for them. I think Nikki Glaser should host the Golden Globes every year until she doesn’t want to. I think Trevor Noah does an amazing job with the Grammys. I love watching [Jimmy] Kimmel. I feel like this is our awards show that we host. This is what feels right for us. That being said, I’d take [a major hosting] gig.
What guests are you excited about?
ROGERS The honorary tributes are being given to Kenan Thompson and Allison Janney, and I think that those are both incredibly deserving people that would deserve this at an ordinary ceremony but are getting it here because maybe they wouldn’t be top of mind, for whatever reason, for some of those other awards bodies.
YANG For Kenan it is the Titan of Culture, and for Allison Janney, this is our second year of doing the Lifetime of Culture. This is given to people who obviously have much longer careers ahead of them, but we’re just honoring the impact they’ve already made on the culture.
ROGERS In a show that is 98 percent jokes, I watched a presentation that we’re going to do for Kenan, and I actually got emotional because you realize just how long he has been making us laugh, and especially for people that are in our generation.
So are you hoping this is the start of many more Las Culturistas Culture Awards?
YANG That would be nice.
ROGERS Bowen is so much better at getting renewed than I am, so I feel like the fact that he’s here is a huge deal. It’s a big boon in the “getting renewed” column.
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