Emmy host with the most Neil Patrick Harris talks about last-minute preparations before the big night

I just picked up my media credentials tor a red carpet and backstage spot for Sunday nights Emmys and look forward to blogging all about who wins, whi doesn’t and who says ior does what! If you sign up to follow me on Twitter, you get a barrage of posts as it all happens otherwise I consolidate much of it into posts later on.

But my workload obviously is nothing compared to that of Neil Patrick Harris who is hosting the prime time event for the first time and is one of its producers. I trust this will mark a big imprivement to recent years where the hosting was abysmal (sorry Ryan Seacrest).

NPH talked to Oprah.com about som e of the preparations:

“I’m just trying to make sure all the comedy host elements are in place,” said Neil, himself a nominee for How I Met Your Mother.. ” We’ll have a good opening bit and a couple surprise things throughout. We want to balance respecting the show and the doling out of the awards with the sort of random things that will keep the audience’s attention in other ways. So that’s kind of been my job. You want to make it unique and, yet, classic. That’s a tricky dynamic.”

Will Neil, the veteran of several Broadway musicals do any singing and dancing?

“I suspect you won’t see me dancing very much. That’s not my forte.” he said. ” But yeah, I might throw some sort of singing into it. I haven’t quite decided. I sort of feel like the Emmys are so classy and glamorous and black tie, the host really needs to respect his job title. I think too much “Look at me! Look at me!” as the host of a show that big is counterproductive. So long as I make you feel confident that you’re in good hands with me as the host, then it’s my real responsibility to introduce you to a lot of other people and elements — other presenters who are then going to talk to you or other introductions of next sections. That’s my role. It’s not really to be a song-and-dance man.”

His Emmy host inspiration: “Steve Allen hosted the first televised awards, which was the 7th Annual Emmy Awards, in, I think, 1955, and he was great. That was sort of my inspiration for all of this. He just had such a dry wit, a commanding voice, a great presence. You knew when you were watching it that if something went wrong, you could look to him, and he would steer you through it. It was always with great dignity and a dry sense of humor, and he was sort of out there all the time. He was definitely the “host.” He definitely helped the show, so I like that. Johnny Carson, too, was great.”