Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers brought the Las Culturistas Culture Awards back to Bravo for a second year, taping the offbeat ceremony in downtown Los Angeles on May 30 with a broadcast date set for June 17. This time, Rogers said, they came in knowing the show could work.
That matters because the awards are not run by a committee or handed out after a season of industry voting. Yang and Rogers choose the nominations and winners themselves, turning the show into a self-made parody of awards-season seriousness. The second-year edition kept that spirit intact with categories like the Hilary Duff Award for Millennial Excellence and Best Picture — Literal Picture, the kind of names that make the joke before anyone takes the stage.
Rogers said last year they were so panicked about whether the show could happen that they forgot to enjoy it a little bit. Yang said this year felt steadier and that there were things about the night that would certainly outdo year one. The confidence was not hard to miss on the carpet, where Will Ferrell, RuPaul, Hannah Einbinder, Meg Stalter, Paul W. Downs, Aidy Bryant, Sarah Sherman, Mandy Moore, Rachel Zegler, Ciara Miller, Paige Desorbo, Hannah Berner, Francois Arnaud and Lisa Rinna appeared before the taping.
But the pair also let the joke wobble in a useful way. Rogers said some of the campaigns to win have been incredible and that they work, then added, “Who knew we could be bought?” Yang shot back, “Everybody knew,” and Rogers followed with the line that made the gag land even harder: “and that makes us just like every other award show.” It was a reminder that even a show built on irreverence still plays by one of entertainment’s oldest rules: if people want the trophy badly enough, they will lobby for it.
That is part of why the show has grown beyond its origins as a Las Culturistas podcast offshoot. Last year it moved onto broadcast for the first time after being staged on a smaller scale in New York for several years, and this year’s Bravo return gave it a wider platform without sanding off the joke. Joel Kim Booster said awards shows should learn to be funny again, while Einbinder took the thought one step further and said they should learn that gay people should be in charge. The taped show is now set to air on June 17, and the real test is whether the bigger stage can keep the same loose, very specific chaos that made year one work at all.
