Macaulay Culkin took the stage and couldn’t hold it back: the word that came out was ‘Mom.’
That’s how he remembered Catherine O’Hara, who played his mother in Home Alone and died in January at the age of 71. Alongside Annie Murphy and Dan Levy, he shared anecdotes and ended with a request that left everyone in silence: to call their own mothers that very night.
The In Memoriam segment at the 2026 Emmys, held on September 14 at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles, also made room for Dolly Parton, bid farewell to by Sally Field with a phrase that instantly became memorable: ‘If angels truly exist on Earth, we just lost one.’ Visibly moved, Jamie Lee Curtis remembered director Rob Reiner, who received a posthumous Emmy for The Bear. Noah Kahan closed the tribute by singing Bridge Over Troubled Water as the faces of those who are no longer with us appeared.