Daytime Emmys: Did Jacqueline MacInnes Wood and Maurice Benard Really Present Together?

This year’s Daytime Emmys was a virtual event due to COVID-19. Presenters, nominees, winners, and the audience all experienced the awards presentation remotely. Two stars — last year’s Outstanding Lead Actor and Outstanding Lead Actress winners — actually presented together. Was it movie magic or were the two actors in the same room at the same time?

Daytime Emmys Shocker

It was a question on the minds of soap fans. One, Candy, posted the question on Twitter: “Ok let’s chat because this was a talk about moment many people think Mo and JMW were in the same room….I think they weren’t and this shows that the editing job is so good you couldn’t tell. #DaytimeEmmys2020.”

Eva Basler, Vice President, Communications for Bell-Phillip Television, which produces BB, and a board member of the TV Academy (which administers the Prime Time Emmys), replied to Candy’s tweet, offering the following explanation: “Hi Candice! I coordinated @MauriceBenard & #JacquelineMacInnesWood to present and then coordinated the details of this shoot for the production company, #AmerianTelevisionInternational, and @DaytimeEmmys (no producer credit necessary, LOL). They were definitely in the same room!”

Now, does being in the same room mean they were actually sitting right next to one another? It is possible the pair was socially-distanced and then edited closer together, a technique we will likely see on soaps when they return to keep actors safe on the set.

As viewers saw, Wood and Maurice Benard presented the award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series to Jason Thompson for his role as Billy Abbott on The Young and the Restless. This is Thompson’s first win and first nomination for playing Billy. He’d been nominated five times before in the same category for his role as Dr. Patrick Drake on General Hospital. Thompson joined YR in 2015.

Thompson’s winning reel included scenes in which Billy delved further into the loss of his daughter Delia (Sophie Pollono), who’d been struck and killed accidentally years earlier by Adam played then, Michael Muhney; now, Mark Grossman, who was nominated for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series.