27th SAG Awards will be a one-hour, pre-taped show

The producers of the 27th Screen Actors Guild Awards revealed today that the show will have a dramatically different look than years past, as was first exclusively reported by Variety on Wednesday.

The SAG Awards executive producers Todd Milliner, Sean Hayes and Kathy Connell told Variety that the show will be pre-taped, including winner reveals, and be limited to just a one-hour running time, covering 13 awards for film and television plus special honors. It’s also forgoing a host or even a set. Last weekend, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association that puts on the Golden Globe Awards, aimed to pull of the first major partially in-person awards show of the season, and bi-coastal at that, but was met with middling results and disastrous ratings for its 3-hour ceremony.

“We’re looking at trying to do a unique award ceremony in an hour and leave people saying, which they very rarely do [with an awards show], ‘Man, I wish we had more,’” Milliner said.

Still in place will be the In Memoriam (the Globes opted out of one again this year) and the traditional ‘I Am An Actor’ segments, which will be produced with a two-person crews will be sent to performers’ homes or recorded via their own computers and edited into the show.

With all segments being be recorded beforehand and edited together before the show’s airtime, the producers will be able to create a show that ends right on time.

As if all of these changes weren’t enough, here’s the biggest one: in the days leading up to the broadcast, nominees from each category will gather together in their own category-specific Zoom room, where the winner will be announced and can give their acceptance speech. Meaning, every nominee will know the results ahead of the rest of the world and must keep mum about it on all socials as to keep the element of surprise.

The 27th Screen Actors Guild Awards will air April 4 at 6pm PT/9m ET on TNT and TBS. Here is the full list of nominations for film and television.

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