Emmys Honour O'Hara and Reiner in 10-Minute In Memoriam
The 2026 Emmy Awards held 10 minutes of its broadcast for the dead, opening with Catherine O'Hara and closing with Rob Reiner.
The In Memoriam, the ceremony's obituary section, put live tributes to O'Hara and Reiner around a filmed reel, according to Deadline. It is the moment in the night when the industry pauses to name colleagues who have died. Noah Kahan sang Paul Simon's "Bridge Over Troubled Water" while names and faces played on screen.
O'Hara, who died in January at age 71, was honoured first. Macaulay Culkin, Annie Murphy and Dan Levy took part in that opening tribute.
Jamie Lee Curtis gave the closing tribute to Reiner. Curtis said she and her husband Christopher Guest had shared a decades-long friendship with Reiner and his wife Michele Reiner, The Hollywood Reporter reported. She called Reiner "our beloved Meathead", a reference to his character Michael Stivic on All in the Family.
The honour came only a week after Reiner had won an Emmy of his own. He won Guest Actor in a Comedy Series, the prize for a short appearance by a performer who is not in the main cast, for playing restaurant and business consultant Albert Schnurr on The Bear.
That victory set a 48-year gap between acting Emmy wins. It passed the previous 37-year gap held by his father Carl Reiner, according to Deadline.
Reiner was known to film audiences as the director of This Is Spinal Tap, Stand By Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, Misery and A Few Good Men. Curtis also acknowledged during her speech the death of Cheers co-creator James Burrows, who was a close friend of Reiner.
Reiner and his wife Michele were killed in December. They were found stabbed in their Brentwood home. Their son Nick Reiner has been indicted for the killings, meaning formally charged, and has pleaded not guilty.
The central reel listed Burrows alongside Louise Lasser, Vincent Pastore, Anthony Geary and Bob Mackie, among others. Mackie died only hours before the Emmys broadcast.
What makes this stand out is the compression of loss and recognition into one week. A new winner returned to the screen days later only in memory. For viewers at home, it linked last week's winners with names that will not appear again.
