The Boys and Girls Club of America received a sizable donation from Nate Bargatze Sunday night.
As the Emmy Awards host, the comedian put his own money on the line in hopes of keeping the show neatly packed into its three-hour time frame.
Bargatze vowed to donate $100,000 to the Boys and Girls of America — but there was a caveat.
Each Emmy winner was allotted 45 seconds for an acceptance speech. For every second someone talked past their time limit, Bargatze would subtract $1,000 from his donation.
At the same time, Bargatze also committed to adding $1,000 to his donation for every second an acceptance speech went under the 45-second time limit.
“That’s tough, it’s brutal,” Bargatze told the crowd during his opening monologue. “What are you gonna do, though? I can’t change it — this is a game I made up and these are the rules.”
Was Bargatze’s plan effective? Sort of.
Seth Rogan started the night off strong while accepting his first of three Emmys for his work on the comedy “The Studio.” Rogan spoke six seconds under the time limit, bringing the total up to $106,000.
It swiftly went down from there. After a handful of acceptance speeches, the sum dropped to $98,000.
Then Hannah Einbinder, who won for her performance as a supporting actress in the comedy “Hacks,” drained the donation to $80,000.
Comedian John Oliver came to the rescue with brief comments, filling the pot back up to $90,000. But Oliver’s recovery efforts did not last long.
A series of wins for the drama “Adolescence,” guzzled the donation down to $36,000.
Bargatze stepped in and partially made up for the dwindling donation sum, and said he would “pick up the tab” for 15-year-old Owen Cooper, who made history as the youngest male recipient of an Emmy — which he won for his supporting performance in “Adolescence.”
At the “In Memoriam” segment, just over halfway through the show, the donation was down to $52,000.
And it doesn’t get better from there.
The donation sank to minus $26,000 following Stephen Colbert’s win for best talk series with “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.” And then drooped even to minus $60,000 after “The Studio” won for best comedy.
Bargatze did not share the final total with viewers, but called it “embarrassing.”
“The number, I’ll be honest with you, it was embarrassing. It went way down,” Bargatze told the audience at the close of the show. “I can’t imagine ever doing this again, so CBS is going to add $100,000, I will give $250,000.”
Following donations from CBS and Bargatze, the final donation ended at $350,000 for the Boys and Girls Club of America.
