More than five years after The Good Place ended its four-season run on NBC, its stars Kristen Bell and Ted Danson and creator/executive producer Mike Schur reunited on the Emmy stage. The occasion was the 2025 Bob Hope Humanitarian Award, given Sunday during the Emmy ceremony to Danson and his wife, fellow actor Mary Steenburgen. Bell and Schur presented the couple with the honor.
“Mike and I are here to celebrate our good friends Mary Steenburgen who is both a brilliant actor and devoted philanthropist,” Bell said.
Added Schur, “We also here to celebrate Ted Danson who is both tall and from San Diego.”
The quartet hugged on stage before Danson and Steenburgen accepted the award, with Danson ad-libbing “best friends,” in reference to Bell and Schur.
In their speech, Steenburgen and Danson remembered fondly their dads, a train conductor, and an archeologist, respectively, and the life lessons they taught them about compassion and that “this life is not just about us.”
“If it’s true that life is made up of two emotions, love and fear, the world’s a little out of balance right now,” Steenburgen said. “We don’t want to live in fear, so we make ourselves useful working for organizations that move this gale away from fear and put us smack dab in the middle of love.”
Bell and Schur were at the 2025 Emmys as nominees — Bell in the Outstanding Lead Actress In a Comedy Series category for Netflix’s Nobody Wants This and Schur in the Outstanding Comedy Series field as an executive producer of last year’s winner, HBO Max’s Hacks.
Schur and Danson are back working together on Netflix’s A Man On the Inside, which is returning for a second season with Steenburgen joining the cast.
Danson co-founded the American Oceans Campaign (AOC) in 1987 to alert Americans to the life-threatening hazards created by oil spills, offshore developments, toxic wastes, sewage pollution and other ocean abuses. The AOC merged with Oceana in 2001. Since then, Danson has served on Oceana’s board of directors and has testified before the House Committee on National Resources on behalf of the cause.
Steenburgen has collaborated with Artists for a Free South Africa, the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, Heifer International, No Kid Hungry and Oceana. She is also an advocate for increasing funding for the arts in schools across the country.
In 2007 Danson and Steenburgen co-founded the nonprofit organization Angels at Risk with activist Susie Spain, which addresses the crisis of children, teenagers and their families who are at risk for drug and alcohol abuse.
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