Chuck Norris spent years as one of network television’s biggest draws.
Then he died, and Hollywood got the chance to say goodbye on its biggest night.
Instead, the cameras skipped right past him like he never existed and Chuck Norris suffered this final insult from Hollywood.
The Emmys Erase a Nine-Season CBS Star
Every year the Emmy Awards run an In Memoriam segment honoring television industry members who died over the past year. Chuck Norris, the rugged action star, died in March at 86. He spent nearly a decade as the face of one of CBS’s most durable hits.
The show ran for nine seasons from 1993 to 2001 on CBS and became a Saturday-night staple. Fewer people watch TV on Saturday nights compared to other nights, yet Walker still managed to attract somewhere between 10 and 20 million viewers over those nine seasons and ranked as high as 18 in the overall ratings. That is not a niche performer nobody remembers. That is a star who anchored a network’s entire Saturday night lineup for the better part of a decade.
Norris’s name never showed up on screen. The 2026 telecast built its In Memoriam segment around lengthy tributes to Rob Reiner, Dolly Parton and Catherine O’Hara. Those are fine tributes for fine performers. But somewhere between planning those extended segments and running out of “time,” the producers decided a man who spent nine years starring in a CBS hit did not make the cut.
Variety Buries Norris in a List of Afterthoughts
After the broadcast, social media users quickly pointed out names that were omitted in the interest of time. Fans called out names like Walker Texas Ranger star Chuck Norris, Days of Our Lives and Starship Troopers actor Patrick Muldoon, The Gong Show panelist Jaye P Morgan, The Ring actress Daveigh Chase and 30 Rock performer Grizz Chapman as not being recognized during the Emmys’ official In Memoriam segment.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer star Nicholas Brendon suffered the same fate. His omission stood out even more because the In Memoriam did recognize his Buffy co-star Anthony Head. So the show found room to honor one member of that cast and not the other.
Breitbart’s John Nolte did not buy the “ran out of time” excuse for a second. He wrote that the far-left Variety deliberately snubbed and downplayed Chuck Norris by piling him in the middle of a bunch of television names that do not even come close to the star power, fame, public adulation, and success on television that Norris enjoyed.
And Nolte’s larger point cuts right to the heart of how these awards shows operate now. He argued the Emmys use the In Memoriam segment just like the modern-day Oscars, as a political weapon to enforce fealty to its leftist ideology — you either think and express the correct thoughts, or you are snubbed during the In Memoriam segment.
The Academy’s Excuse Doesn’t Hold Up
Television Academy chairman Cris Abrego offered an explanation before the show even aired. He said before the broadcast that an unusually large number of prominent television figures had died and it was “not feasible” to include everyone in the televised segment.
But the Academy’s own records undercut that excuse. The Television Academy does include Norris in its online memorial database, where it recognizes him as best known for portraying Cordell Walker. So the institution knew exactly who he was and what he accomplished. It just decided he did not belong on the broadcast in front of a national audience.
Fans on social media were not shy about their reaction. One furious viewer asked, “How the hell do you omit Chuck frickin Norris!?” Another summed up the mood with a simple, “Chuck Norris left out of the #Emmys In Memoriam?!?!?!?! WTF. Seriously a little angry about that.”
What This Snub Says About Hollywood’s Priorities
Norris built his career and his public persona on Christian faith, conservative politics, and old-fashioned American patriotism. None of that is a secret, and none of it ever made him popular with the people who run Hollywood’s award shows.
But entertainment industry gatekeepers rarely admit that out loud. They reach for softer language instead — “not feasible,” “in the interest of time,” the same excuses trotted out every year when an inconvenient name gets left off the list.
And it is worth noticing who does make the cut every single year. Beloved liberal Hollywood veterans get lengthy, tearful, star-studded tributes. A conservative actor who spent nine seasons as the top-rated star of his own network show gets folded into a text crawl alongside a Gong Show panelist — if he gets mentioned at all.
This is not the first time an entertainment industry institution has treated a conservative entertainer like an afterthought while showering praise on ideological allies. Hollywood has spent years marginalizing Christian conservative voices while celebrating performers who share its politics, and the Emmys’ treatment of Norris fits that pattern perfectly.
Norris never hid his beliefs to get ahead in an industry that punishes people for holding them. He built Walker, Texas Ranger into a hit anyway, on the strength of an audience that had nothing to do with awards shows or industry approval. That audience is still out there, and it noticed exactly what happened when Hollywood had one last chance to say thank you.
Late-night hosts and industry insiders love to lecture Americans about inclusion and who deserves recognition. Yet when the cameras were rolling and the choice came down to honoring a nine-season CBS icon or filling more minutes with hosts and performers who share the room’s politics, the room made its choice clear.
Sources: Breitbart, Variety, Newsbusters, Todd Starnes, The Hollywood Reporter