Patton Oswalt took home the Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special on Sunday night. And while the win hasn’t garnered the sort of attention for Oswalt as such surprising (and deserving) victories by Rami Malek and Tatiana Maslany, the comedian is now making headlines for what he said after taking home the trophy. First, on stage, Oswalt said the following toward the end of his acceptance speech: “I want to share this with two people: One of them is my daughter, Alice, waiting at home. The other one is waiting somewhere else – I hope.” That’s a pretty amazing line. In late April, Michelle McNamara died in her sleep in the home she shared with Oswalt. The author was 46 years old, married Oswalt in 2005 and gave birth to the couple’s only child in 2009. Since McNamara’s tragic passing, Oswalt has taken the time on a couple of occasions to openly mourn his late wife. “Depression is the tallest kid in the 4th grade, dinging rubber bands off the back of your head and feeling safe on the playground, knowing that no teacher is coming to help you,” he wrote on Facebook in August He then contrasted this feeling with grief . “But grief? Grief is Jason Statham holding that 4th grade bully’s head in a toilet and then f-cking the teacher you’ve got a crush on in front of the class… “Grief makes depression cower behind you and apologize for being such a dick.” Oswalt wrote those words 102 days after McNamara passed away. “I was face-down and frozen for weeks,” he wrote of how he felt when he first lost his wife. “It’s 102 days later and I can confidently say I have reached a point where I’m crawling. Which, objectively, is an improvement. Maybe 102 days later I’ll be walking.” Following his win on Sunday night and his acceptance speech, Oswalt was asked more about McNamara. “Every bit of growth that I’ve had in my career, especially in my writing and my performing, came because I met Michelle McNamara,” he told reporters. “Because I met and married this woman who just was so much wiser and self-actualized and aware of life than I was. I had convinced myself that I was aware and self-actualized and mature but then I met the real deal… “To have that ripped out of my life the way that it has this year – I’m not trying to say that this is meaningless, but everything seems like the lights have been turned down 50% on everything since she’s gone. “It just going to be a long, long time before I can be the kind of person she made me again.” Watch his moving post-win speech below: Patton Oswalt Honors Late Wife In an article for Time.com shortly after McNamara died, Oswalt looked back on the legacy left by his wife. He said at the time: “The reaction to her passing, the people who are shocked at her senseless absence, is a testament to how she steered her life with joyous, wicked curiosity,. “She hasn’t left a void. She’s left a blast crater.”
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Patton Oswalt Wins Emmy, Pays Tribute to Late Wife
