The actor rolled out in a wheelchair to collect the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award, his first appearance at the ceremony with wife Tracy Pollan in thirteen years.
Michael J. Fox rolled onto the Peacock Theater stage in a wheelchair on Monday night and the room stood up before he'd said a word. The Back to the Future actor, 65, was there to collect the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award at the 2026 Emmys, and by the time he reached the microphone the applause hadn't really stopped.
Julianna Margulies, who worked with Fox on The Good Wife, handed him the trophy. "I can think no one more deserving of it than Michael," she said. Fox kept it short. "Thank you to everyone involved for this amazing and humbling honor," he told the crowd.
He was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 1991, at 29. Thirty-five years on, he used the speech to talk about what that diagnosis actually taught him. "I understood that accepting Parkinson's didn't mean I had to surrender to it," he said. "It just meant doing whatever I could for people living with this disease." He also thanked his wife, Tracy Pollan, and their four children, Sam, Aquinnah, Schuyler and Esmé, for what he called their sacrifices and love through his health struggles.
First red carpet in over a decade
Monday marked the couple's first appearance at the Emmys since 2013. Pollan, 66, walked the carpet with Fox beforehand, he in a black suit, she in a black high-neck gown. They've been married since 1988.
The Television Academy announced back in July that Fox would get the award, which past winners have included George Clooney, Sean Penn, Oprah and the late Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen pairing. Academy chair Cris Abrego called Fox one of television's most enduring performers, someone whose work has left a mark on generations of viewers, and praised what he described as the actor's leadership in pushing Parkinson's research forward, per a statement carried by Entertainment Weekly.
Fox has spent much of the last three decades doing exactly that. His foundation has become one of the largest private funders of Parkinson's research anywhere, and Monday's award effectively recognised three decades of that work rather than any single film or show.
Elsewhere at the Peacock Theater, the night belonged to television's outgoing late-night guard as much as its rising streamers. Stephen Colbert picked up Outstanding Variety Series for The Late Show four months after CBS pulled the plug on it, and turned up with a grey beard nobody on social media was quite ready for. His speech thanked his writers by name and, pointedly, urged other shows to hire them.
For Fox, though, the story of the night stayed simple. A wheelchair, an ovation, and a speech about carrying on. The next marker on that road is whatever comes out of the research his foundation keeps funding, not another red carpet.
Be the first to comment
Join the argument. No password, just your email or a passkey.