Catherine O’Hara opened the 78th Emmy Awards In Memoriam segment with a tribute from Macaulay Culkin, Annie Murphy and Dan Levy. The placement made her the first name in a sequence that also carried tributes for other television and film figures honored during the ceremony.
Macaulay Culkin’s Mother
Macaulay Culkin said O’Hara was “encouraging, she was warm, she was funny, but the word that I think of is ‘mama.’” He added, “She wasn’t just a wife and mother to [husband] Bo and [sons] Matthew and Luke. She was my mom. She was our mama,” then pushed the line further: “And by extension, she’s all of our mama.... She may have forgotten me twice, but we will always remember her.”
That personal framing came with a built-in television history: O’Hara played his mother in Home Alone and Home Alone 2. For a live awards segment, that kind of memory does more than flatter the honoree; it turns a broad memorial block into a specific family story the audience can follow immediately.
Annie Murphy and Dan Levy
Annie Murphy said fans’ interactions with her remind her “how profoundly Catherine has impacted the world... because she brought us joy.” Dan Levy kept his tribute short and direct, saying O’Hara taught him to “always say yes.” Those two lines gave the segment a practical shape: one stressed the reach of her work, the other pointed to how younger performers absorb that influence.
Noah Kahan’s cover of Simon & Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water ran under projected images of actors, writers, directors and other industry figures who died this year. The segment was built as a sequence, not a single monologue, with music and images carrying the transition from one honoree to the next.
Jamie Lee Curtis Closes
Jamie Lee Curtis ended the segment with tributes to James Burrows and Rob Reiner. She called Burrows’ run “over 1,000 episodes of television” and said the standard he set “will be cherished and studied for generations to come.”
She then said, “And sadly, last year, we lost another cherished legend. Our beloved Meathead, Rob Reiner.” Curtis added that he was “generous and kind and funny as hell and a friend to all,” and noted that Reiner won a posthumous Emmy for guest actor in a comedy series for his work on The Bear earlier this month. That earlier win gave the closing tribute a sharper edge: the segment was honoring someone the Emmys had already recognized in the current cycle.
Among the names projected in the segment were James Van Der Beek, Hayden Panettiere, Eric Dane, Vincent Pastore, Hal Williams, Tim Curry, Shelley Fabares, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Anthony Head, Diane Ladd, Sid Krofft, Ted Turner and Bob Mackie. O’Hara’s placement at the start leaves one awkward but useful question hanging over the broadcast: why she was folded into an In Memoriam block that, by the facts on hand, does not say she died.
