Forget Gervais, T.J. Miller is Going to Be the Awards Show Wild Man This Season

t.j. miller critics choice

Forget Ricky Gervais, and forget Chris Rock, T.J. Miller is the real wild card to keep your eye on this awards hosting season.

As soon as Ricky Gervais was announced as the host of the 2016 Golden Globe awards ceremony, the press started hyping the appearance like a title fight, warning of danger, and unpredictability because Gervais was practically wringing his hands villainously planning to take down those Hollywood fat cats.  The only thing missing was a mustache to twirl as everyone held their collective breaths Sunday night waiting to hear who Gervais was going to skewer.  The result was unspectacular for reasons that varied depending on who you ask. Gervais was accused of being unsharp by some, vulgar by others, and still others found him too predictable.

If you’re looking for rock and roll, if you’re looking for someone to do something unexpected and daring, if you’re looking for someone new and exciting in an award show host, check out T.J. Miller this Sunday night.

T.J. Miller is best known as Silicon Valley’s madman incubator and self proclaimed mentor Erlich Bachman.  He’s also been in plenty of movies like Big Hero 6, Yogi Bear, and Transformers, and he’s cast as Weasel in the highly anticipated super-movie Deadpool coming out this year. This Sunday night, he’ll be hosting the 21st Annual Critic’s Choice Awards which will air on A&E, Lifetime and LMN, and we’re calling it now– he is going outshine every single other allegedly dangerous and unpredictable award show host.

We’re picking T.J. to be the most irreverent and rock and roll host because we can’t imagine Chris Rock attempting to eat record amounts of Chicago Beef Sandwich in 30 seconds while three friends assault him and his sandwich with several bottles of hot sauce, and then immediately do it all over again moments later, but we’ve seen T.J. do it.

We’re picking T.J. to be the wild man because we can’t imagine Ricky Gervais would stuff himself into a suitcase full of clown horns and let another man push and shove to get the suitcase to close on him, but we’ve seen T.J. do it.

We’re picking T.J. to own all award show hosts this year at being daring, because we don’t know any other tv and film stars who would go back to reunite with their sketch group on a small stage, and get as outlandish as ever doing stunts, pratfalls, spittakes and more just for the love of comedy, but we saw T.J. do it last weekend.

We also saw T.J. get rowdy at the Oscars last year, having a ball from the cheap seats with a very loud and un-Oscar-like shout out from the very back row of the Academy Awards ceremony. Miller was in the movie Big Hero 6 which won the Oscar for Best Animated Film, and he got a shout out from the stage as well. You’ve never seen that happen at the Oscars before and probably won’t ever again.  And he headlined last year’s Cannibash, a marijuana themed comedy festival.

We are loving the promos T.J. appears in for the awards ceremony, too.  He’s got the balls to joke about one of his own performances for a laugh, plus he proves that he’s debonaire, he’s dangerous, he’s unpredictable, and he’s funny.  He knows how to do physical comedy, sketch comedy, stand up, improv, television and movies, he’s rock and roll as fuck, and he’s as funny as anyone in the awards game. We think he’s going to hit a home run and cause more than a few spittakes of his own.

Last year Miller won best supporting actor in at the Critics Choice television awards ceremony and joked that awards are for children in his speech.  This year, when The Critics Choice decided to merge their film and television awards shows and go big, they approached Miller to host.  Miller told People magazine, “It is kinda fucking cool that they were like, ‘Hey do want to host the thing? You were funny and weird in your speech, want to just do the whole fucking thing?'”

The 21st annual Critics’ Choice Awards air Sunday, Jan. 17, at 8 p.m. ET on A&E, Lifetime and LMN and we’ll be watching. Check out the promos below. They’re for real funny.

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