LOS ANGELES — Emmy host Neil Patrick Harris isn’t planning to leave the stage during Sunday’s ceremony unless he’s really, really gotta go.
“I’ll be staying on stage the whole show — with a few exceptions,” the second-time Emmy host teased after ceremoniously unraveling the red carpet Wednesday morning. “I thought about having a colostomy bag, but I thought that would not be good for the first few rows. It would be like a Gallagher show if things go wrong, so I may have to excuse myself for a minute or three a couple of times during the show.”
Harris, whose “How I Met Your Mother” is entering its ninth and final season, said he doesn’t feel like he has to prove himself after previously hosting the Emmy and Tony Awards.
“There’s a lot of awards, so I thankfully don’t have to do a lot of work,” he said. “I get to come up with some funny one-liners. If someone vomits, I get to joke about it, but there’s not a lot of vomit. Charlie Sheen hasn’t been on ‘Two and a Half Men’ for years.”
For the sixth year, the show will be held at the Nokia Theatre in downtown Los Angeles. The massive red carpet — more like a red sidewalk, really — will canvass the entire plaza across the street from the Staples Center for Sunday’s TV extravaganza on CBS.
Harris said he’s interested to see how programming from Netflix and other online streaming services will fare at the ceremony and beyond.
“I think it’s really interesting to see how that’s going to shape the way we watch television,” said Harris. “It questions commercials. It questions programming. They were worried it would flop. I got to do ‘Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog,’ which is kind of like the first one of those, so I have a vested interest in those doing well.”
Inside the Nokia Theatre, stagehands were hard at work on preparing the set. The stage has been outfitted with six cubes that pivot up and down and serve as video screens.
Place cards on the chairs in front of the stage’s zebrawood stairs show that Jane Lynch and “Modern Family” stars Ty Burrell and Sofia Vergara are front-row center. Other nominees with front-row spots included Jim Parsons, Connie Britton, Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright.
Many of the seating arrangements in different parts of the orchestra section featured unique pairings: Michael J. Fox aside Elton John, Matt Damon next to Amy Poehler and Dylan McDermott alongside Bob Newhart.
