Given the recent Miss Universe debacle, who wouldn’t assume that someone suddenly crashing the stage at the People’s Choice Awards was just a planned stunt?
After all, the Miss Universe pageant (during which Steve Harvey announced the wrong winner) proved that no one cares that much about award shows until something wildly uncomfortable happens.
And lo and behold, an awkward situation livened up a dull People’s Choice Awards on Wednesday night when a man jumped on stage and grabbed the microphone just as the women of CBS’ The Talk were accepting the trophy for Favorite Daytime TV Hosting Team. As Sara Gilbert started talking, a random guy grabbed the microphone; plugged rapper Kevin Gates’ new album and quoted a line from Kanye West’s new song.
Was this a meta moment, considering the incident echoed West’s infamous VMA stage-crash in 2009? There was no time to think about it, as Sheryl Underwood sprung into action. “You ain’t gonna pull no Steve Harvey up in here!” she said, grabbing the microphone and shooing the man away, calling for security. Sharon Osbourne kicked him in the legs for good measure.
But it was too late — he had already pulled a Steve Harvey by immediately stealing The Talk’s thunder. The People’s Choice Twitter account wasted no time posting the video and turning it into a gif-able moment:
“The ladies of @TheTalkCBS aren’t going to let anyone hijack their acceptance speech!”
So, was it planned? Hard to say. Julie Chen looked fairly shocked; but Gilbert continued on with her speech like nothing happened. Osborne flipped off the cameras, which CBS censors probably didn’t love and cameras quickly cut away; but how could a random audience member walk on stage?
And what about Kevin Gates, the rapper who just got a nice big plug for his new album that comes out this month? Gates’ record label is Atlantic, owned by Warner Music Group, whose parent company is Warner Bros. — which has a pretty close relationship with People’s Choice Awards network CBS. Is it all a coincidence?
So many questions, and as far as these things go, we’ll likely get few answers. Still, while the moment made some noise (Twitter started predictably buzzing after the incident) nothing is ever going to beat the weirdness of Miss Universe.
