The 76th Emmy Awards went off without a hitch, but one highly-anticipated presenter never stepped onto the stage.
Along with father-and-son hosts Eugene Levy and Dan Levy and presenters like Jean Smart, Kathy Bates, and Reba McEntire, Dick Van Dyke was expected to grace the stage at the Peacock Theater in downtown Los Angeles on Sunday, September 15. He never appeared, though.
While it’s unclear why Dick didn’t show up for TV’s Biggest Night, fans around the world are reflecting on his storied career. As a 4-time winner of the Primetime Emmys and a 2-time winner of the Daytime Emmys, not to mention the oldest person to ever win a Daytime Emmy, the 98-year-old actor has quite the reputation on the silver screen.
In fact, on Saturday, September 7, at the Creative Arts Emmy Awards, Dick Van Dyke 98 Years of Magic—a CBS special highlighting Dick’s legendary career—took home the Emmy for Outstanding Variety Special. While the nearly 90-minute special cataloged some of Dick’s most notable contributions to film and television, the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang actor didn’t reap the rewards of it, as he wasn’t a producer on the project.
Despite not getting to take home a trophy at the beginning of September, Dick was all smiles after the event.
"You have to stick with it,” he told reporters following the ceremony. "You're gonna go through hard times and a lot of auditions... but you have to stay with it. Be patient. It's very important to believe that you can do it… I don't know how I did it! I can't believe it, that I'm still here and performing."
Rebecca Norris is a full-time freelance writer living in the Washington, D.C. metro area. Over the past 10+ years, she’s heavily covered a range of lifestyle topics, including travel, home, beauty, style, wellness, and celebrity news. She is a graduate of George Mason University, where she earned a B.A. in Media: Production, Consumption, and Critique, along with a minor in Electronic Journalism. When she's not writing, she can be found strolling with her Jack-Chi, Cash, sipping iced matcha lattes, indulging in delicious cuisine, perusing farmer’s markets and antique sales, collecting colored glass, getting lost within the pages of a book, and exploring new bucket-list cities.
