How Emmy winner Glenn Weiss pulled off biggest surprise of the night

IT WAS the highlight of the Emmys. Glenn Weiss, fresh from his win, popping the question to his proud girlfriend. But what was the plan if he lost?

IF ANYONE knows a thing or two about timing, it’s the director of the Oscars.

Glenn Weiss, who won an Emmy this year for his work on the Oscars, had his proposal to now-fiancee Jan Svendsen perfectly timed so that he wouldn’t get played off stage during their big moment.

TGlenn Weiss had just won the Outstanding Directing for a Variety Special award for The Oscars. Photo: Robyn Beck/AFP

“I kept running it in my head and timing it with a watch, because I don’t want to be played off during the biggest moment of our lives,” Weiss told Entertainment Tonight .

“So I keep trimming and trimming and taking stuff out, and I’m going, ‘God, please don’t play me off.’ And as the night’s going, I’m watching other people speak, the prompter, [thinking], ‘OK, how much are they enforcing? What are they not?’ I’m kind of getting my head there. I’ve got to cut it. I still cut some stuff out. I don’t even know what made it and what didn’t.”

The sweet moment captured the hearts of viewers all over the world. Photo: Robyn Beck/AFP

And the audience in the theatre went wild. Photo: Robyn Beck/AFP

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Fortunately, the shock value and emotional response from the audience helped him get more time on stage without getting the musical cue to leave.

“I’ll tell you what: What blew my mind here was the reaction, the room reaction. Honest to God, when I thought of doing this — and in my head, I’m thinking, ‘They’re going to play me out. No one’s going to want me to be doing this.’ I really had all that going on in my head,” Weiss continued. ” … And then I couldn’t even finish what I had planned, because everyone was on their feet, yelling and screaming, which was great! I’m so happy it went that way.”

His grandiose plan to propose to Svendsen wasn’t contingent on him winning the Emmy; he planned to pop the question no matter what.

“There was no plan B; our life is a plan A!” he said. “And whatever happens is where it happened. So it happened to happen on the stage. It could’ve happened somewhere else. You never know!”

This story originally appeared in the NY Post and is republished here with permission.