Julia Louis-Dreyfus Had a Profane, Five-Word Acceptance Speech for Her Webby
Like she doesn’t have enough awards?
At the Emmys alone, Julia Louis-Dreyfus has taken home 11 trophies for three different parts (Selina Meyer on Veep, Christine Campbell on The New Adventures of Old Christine and Elaine Benes on Seinfeld), in addition to a Hall of Fame honor. So Louis-Dreyfus probably didn’t clear space on the mantle for the Webby she won for her Wiser Than Me podcast, but she definitely left an impression on everyone who watched her acceptance speech.
Here’s to the Webby Awards — what the honor lacks in prestige it makes up for in common sense. Who wants to hear award winners read the names of their publicists, agents, managers, lawyers and hair stylists from a dog-eared notecard? The Webbys wisely instituted a rule in which all winners submit an acceptance speech consisting of five words — no more, no less. The guideline “keeps our celebrations vibrant and exciting,” or in other words, mercifully short.
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Stephen Colbert was thrilled to congratulate Louis-Dreyfus on the award. “Come on, you’ve made it!” he exclaimed.
“I hit the big time,” she acknowledged, a backhanded slap of sarcasm surely appreciated by the Webby Awards.
Colbert asked Louis-Dreyfus if she’d mind sharing her acceptance speech with the people. She hesitated. After all, isn’t Colbert’s show on CBS? “It’s cool,” he assured her.
Fine then. To the delight of the studio audience, Louis-Dreyfus recreated her award-winning, five-word presentation: “Listen to old ladies, motherfuckers.”
The CBS version let her get to mother- before bleeping out the offending syllables. “That’s one word, that last word?” questioned Colbert.
“100 percent,” she reassured him.
Louis-Dreyfus says she got the idea for the podcast after watching a documentary about the actress Jane Fonda. “I was really blown away by the scope of her life and her experience and the variety of things that she had done,” she told Colbert. All of which got her thinking that we rarely get the opportunity to hear the wisdom of older women.
“We hear from old men,” she explained. “Sorry, we do. But we don’t really hear from old women and their wisdom. And I thought I need to hear from old women. I personally do and so that is that is the conceit for these conversations.”
After Colbert offered to take a nap and allow Louis-Dreyfus to host the rest of Late Show for the evening, he asked which she preferred — being the interviewer or the interviewee.
“I like it here,” she confessed, pointing to her spot in the guest chair. “It’s not that I don’t like what I’m doing, but it’s the specific subject matter that intrigues me. But really, I’m an actor and that’s my first love."
Colbert got it. “Point the camera at me!”
“At me!” she agreed.