At the Top of the Standard’s fifth anniversary party last night, we saw Neil Patrick Harris bob his head and hand-dance to Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock’s “It Takes Two.” It was nothing crazy — that’s what any living, breathing human does when he hears that song. But, nonetheless, it got us excited for Emmys night, when we’ll presumably see NPH, Best Host Ever, pull out all the stops. And so we asked him how rehearsals were going. “It’s stressful at the moment, but I think it will be a good show,” he said. “There are going to be some fun surprising bits.” But, he added, there won’t be a magnificently musical opening. “I won’t be doing a song and a dance during the opening,” he said. “I want to honor TV and the medium so it won’t be quite so live and theatrical as the Tonys.”
The Emmys crowd is much more “disparate” than the Tonys crowd, NPH explained. “You have all these different people who work in their own little bubbles. You know, everyone who’s on a show really works on their show — they don’t interact with other people. On How I Met Your Mother, we only hang out with each other. We don’t go to Modern Family, which is, say, a stage down, to like bring them food; we work. So that’s what you get is a night of everyone all together but all separate, so my job becomes trying to unite everyone together in a fun, celebratory way.” As for what he’s looking forward to, he’s as curious as the rest of us to see how Netflix’s House of Cards fairs. “I’m a big Kevin Spacey fan and this is the first year that a show that has never been on a network is nominated for Best Show, Best Actor, Best Actress. I want to see how the voters reward that or not.” But don’t tell him how season one ends, because he hasn’t actually finished it yet. “I’m slowly watching it,” he says. “We have kids, so I can’t binge-watch anything.”
