The Gays Won Big at the 2023 MTV Movie & TV Awards

It was a good year for the gays at a truncated MTV Movie & TV Awards.

Due to the ongoing writer’s strike, the MTV Movie & TV Awards were without a host, weren’t live, and consisted of already-taped sketches and video acceptance speeches.

"Everything we celebrate and honor about movies and television is born out of [writers'] creation," Drew Barrymore said in a statement about her decision to back out of hosting the show. "And until a solution is reached, I am choosing to wait but I'll be watching from home and hope you will join me."

She will be back next year to host.

The Last of Us was the big winner of the night, picking up several trophies, including Best Hero for Pedro Pascal and his morally ambiguous antihero Joel, Best Duo for Pascal and Bella Ramsey, and Best Show, beating out the likes of Wednesday, The White Lotus, Stranger Things, and Yellowjackets.

Another gay favorite, Scream VI, with queer star Jasmin Savoy Brown, won for Best Movie, beating out others like Avatar: The Way of Water, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and Nope. Scream VI becomes the second film in the franchise to win Best Movie at the MTV Movie Awards, after the original took the golden popcorn home in 1997.

Other gay winners of the night include RuPaul’s Drag Race: All-Stars taking home the trophy for Best Competition Series, and the legendary Jennifer Coolidge, who took home the Comedic Genius Award. She also shouted out the striking writers in her speech.

“Almost all great comedy starts with great writers, and as a proud member of SAG, I stand here before you tonight side-by-side with my sisters and brothers from the WGA, who are fighting for the rights of artists everywhere,” Coolidge said. “I think of the words of Shakespeare where he once said, ‘The play is the thing.’ Well, I don’t want to put words in his mouth or anything, but I think what he really meant was it’s everything.”