The Emmys are on tonight, and Mariska Hargitay is ditching the comedian host playbook completely

Mariska Hargitay is hosting the Emmys tonight, and she has already told everyone she is ditching the format that has defined the job for years.

The 78th Primetime Emmy Awards air live from the Peacock Theater in LA tonight, and Hargitay is the first woman to solo host the ceremony since Jane Lynch in 2011, and the first non comedian to host since Angela Lansbury in 1993. She is only the fourth woman to host the Emmys this century.

She is calling it "the Mariska Emmys," moving away from the usual stand up comedian opening that has been the default hosting format for years. It comes off the back of a genuinely big year personally. Hargitay picked up two Creative Arts Emmys of her own for My Mom Jayne, her documentary about her mother Jayne Mansfield, which she also directed, and she just wrapped her Broadway debut in the solo play Every Brilliant Thing.

Awards season hosting always gets a morning after verdict, mostly about whether the jokes landed. This one is more interesting than that because Hargitay is not trying to be a comedian doing an Emmys set. She is an actress with her own Emmy nomination in the room, hosting on her own terms rather than auditioning for the format that has dominated the show for fifteen years.

Whether ditching the comedian playbook actually means a better three hours of television, or just a different kind of safe, is the real question. But breaking a fifteen year run of the same hosting mould, on NBC's 100th anniversary year no less, is at minimum a genuinely different bet than the network usually makes.

Tune in tonight if you want to find out whether it pays off, because by tomorrow the discourse will have already moved on to whichever speech goes viral.