Did We Just See the Final VMAs? ‘Hell if I Know,’ Says Producer Van Toffler

The MTV Video Music Awards aren’t what they used to be, but that isn’t to say they’re not entertaining. After all, what other stage hosts an epic Madonna opener complete with weed-toking Seth Rogen? Or gives George Michael his flowers in the form of a faithful tribute by the likes of Sombr, Raye, Teddy Swims, and Adam Lambert, among others? Or has the cultural currency to tractor beam Taylor Swift onto the red carpet?

It drew its best audience numbers since 2015, with 8.43 million viewers tuning in on CBS and MTV, according to fast national live-plus-same-day Nielsen figures, per The Wrap.

The 2026 edition, produced by MTV veteran Van Toffler, who also helmed last year’s show, delivered plenty of jaw-dropping moments, and even a head-scratcher or two (Dave Grohl at a loss for words?). Rolling Stone linked up with Toffler for a post-mortem the morning after.

We have some burning questions for you, starting with the football game preempting the start of the VMAs, which confused everybody: Was there a plan in place for that?
Yeah, definitely. I think the confusion mostly happened on MTV, where football is not broadcast and people expect to go to MTV for the show. Now it’s on CBS, where a run-over and a football game are a common occurrence. And it was a great football game.

Just so you know, we did indeed start the show on time. They just ran it 20 minutes late as the game ran over. They forgot to tell the viewers, “As soon as the football game’s over, we’ll be coming live from the VMAs.” So that was probably a misstep in terms of the MTV viewers.

Watching social media, there were already pictures of Madonna performing. It was a moment of terror.
It was a moment of terror for me in the truck. I’m sure people were confused, and they should have put a crawl at the bottom saying, “We will come live on TV as soon as the NFL game’s over.” A lesson learned.

Something else that happened: There were a lot of fake red-carpet photos popping up. People who weren’t there made to look like they were.
I didn’t even know that. … It’s so hard to prevent. We did invite social media people and creators into the venue this year. And what’s also interesting, and new and novel, is that all of the performers bring their own social media people, who film all the stuff they do. So it’s hard to keep things under wraps and keep any secrets any longer. That probably was a part of it.

There were rumors that Miley Cyrus and Rosalía were in talks to appear. Any truth to either?
We probably reached out to them. There were so many artists we talked to about potential moments. Rosalía is such a great performer, but I think she was in South America. Miley also had a conflict. I would’ve loved to have had Miley perform, or even talk about her godmother, [Dolly Parton]. But getting Kacey Musgraves, whom I know Dolly loved and who loved Dolly, to come in and do “I Will Always Love You” was a pretty brave moment of hers.

I had worked with Dolly and her team on the last TV show she did a couple of years ago, and they sent us a whole bunch of footage. I wanted to really show Dolly’s personality. She was funny and salty as well as such a great musical soul and so generous. We found this old clip — she was probably about Kacey’s age when she hosted a variety show, and she tells a joke and goes into “I Will Always Love You.” Then we transitioned right into Kacey doing it. It felt like the right way to honor such a great musical soul. I might add, it was Kacey’s idea to end with a clip — to interrupt it. That is the beauty of working with musicians, they are brilliant and know what they’re doing.

Speaking of performances, no Nirvana tribute? They’ve played plenty of times with guest singers in recent years.
Here’s the thing: It’s like if you go see Paul and Ringo perform. It’s not the Beatles; it’s Paul and Ringo. Nirvana’s not Nirvana without Kurt.

It just felt right to honor their work in video and the impact of their music, and to have someone like Chuck D, whom they love and who loves them, give them the tribute — as opposed to trying to assemble somebody who sounded like Nirvana.

Did you reach out to Frances Bean and Courtney Love?
Of course. We wouldn’t have done the tribute without their participation. They approved everything: the tape and the person who presented it to them. They were a part of everything. They just weren’t there live.

Can you talk a bit about how Madonna’s opening number came about? Seth Rogen’s appearance was unexpected…
She’s such a unique individual who always pushed MTV, me, and every production team. It was a wonderfully collaborative performance. Given that [Confessions II] is a dance record inspired by her time in New York and Danceteria, we brought her a bunch of ideas. One was transforming the MTV logo into her logo, and another was the bathroom stalls. She took some of our ideas and then really brought her own.

All those cameos were her calling people directly: Sombr, Debi Mazar, Seth Rogen, Andrew Watt, Fab 5 Freddy, and a bunch of people from her past. Those were all her selections. I didn’t know about Seth Rogen until maybe two days before. And, of course, you’re not supposed to smoke on TV, but everyone decided to smoke on TV last night.

That was real weed, I assume? Because Seth would never smoke anything other…
I was in the truck, far away from the stage, so I can’t say I smelled it from there. I can neither confirm nor deny. Snoop, on the other hand — no, I’m kidding.

I read in one of your interviews that you said the Taylor award came from an “external” suggestion. What does that mean?
Basically, a bunch of us — MTV employees, the producers, the production team — were looking at Taylor’s body of work and her evolution. She’s an artist who has thrived in front of the camera and behind the camera, in all genres of music.

When I was running MTV Networks, CMT was part of my portfolio, and she was first honored there for “Tim McGraw.” Then she came and did the show at Radio City, which was a memorable night. She’s just evolved so much, and we felt this would be a great way to honor her work. So we decided to do that as a group internally in the production team and reached out to her and her team. We’re happy it worked out.

Clearly it meant a lot to Taylor to be recognized for her directing work.
Oh, yeah. She picked Dakota [Johnson], and she takes that work so seriously in all aspects of those videos. They are short films, no doubt. She makes exceptional videos, so we felt this would be the right time to honor her for that. It turns out she also won Video of the Year.

Which is totally deserved. “The Fate of Ophelia” is an epic visual spectacle.
She keeps pushing it and making great stuff. It’s not just the music; it’s the visual aspect as well that she marries to it. She is a true visionary.

The George Michael tribute was a highlight. Sombr wore George Michael’s jacket, we learned after the fact?
We tried to replicate as much as we could. We had a jukebox there, and it was such a great marriage of mostly current artists — from Raye and Sombr and Teddy Swims to Adam Lambert — and all the singers at the end. Those are such great songs, and maybe one of the best aspects of the show was how it traversed generations and music. Music has changed so much since I was doing the VMAs early on. I don’t think we ever had anyone above the age of 35 on the show.

Streaming has eradicated generations. If you like metal, you may like Sabbath, Guns N’ Roses and Måneskin, but they’re all decades apart. They all get merged together. That was part of the upside of the show: You had Nirvana, a George Michael tribute, and a Dolly tribute, and then Lisa, Raye, and Sienna [Spiro] for the first time. They all know each other’s music.

You think about all the Nirvana fans — from Olivia Rodrigo to Selena Gomez to Dr. Dre and Chuck D. It’s not split generationally the way it used to be. That was a fortuitous part of the show: We could book old and young.

Were you around when “I Want Your Sex” came out? Do you remember the controversy over airing it?
Yeah, we had to put warnings in front of some videos. Madonna sometimes would come in purposely knowing we were going to ban her video. Like “Justify My Love” — it was like a soft-core porn video, and we were like, “Oh, we can’t run that.” She had the release planned as soon as she was leaving the office. We had a daypart for certain videos. George definitely had videos that were quite sexual and started the supermodel era, but he was such a seminal part of MTV’s history.

I remember we did the 10th anniversary of MTV for ABC. We had all these celebrities — Tom Cruise, R.E.M. — but we had George Michael doing “Freedom” in the round with the choir. It’s killer. We tried to replicate some of that last night. Current music consumption patterns have allowed music shows to have that kind of mix of genres and artists.

Another breakout moment was the Young Lean performance.
I love to hear that. Once you lay the framework of the house — with Madonna, Taylor, Raye, Sienna, and Lisa — it gives you the opportunity to take risks. There was one year we had the Leningrad Cowboys on the VMAs. A bunch of us saw this video that Young Lean did, and we lost our minds. We thought, “If there is any way we can possibly recreate that on our stage, we’re going to take that swing.”

We had to bring people in from London and bring all these kids in. For a certain demographic, teens have probably seen that video multiple times, but most of the population hasn’t. We thought they were going to say, “What the hell is on the stage at the VMAs?”

It’s frenetic. It’s mayhem for three minutes, and that kid Young Lean’s got such a great attitude. The irony is that we were told we couldn’t let him smoke. If you watch the video, he smokes a cigarette in the middle while all these kids are dancing their asses off. So we had him have an ice cream cone that he shoves in the camera instead of a cigarette, and there’s Pat Smear walking up onstage lighting a cigarette.

Any records broken last night?
I think Taylor now has the most VMAs in history. That was my understanding. I expect we’ll see Sienna, Madonna, and Raye all have big bumps in streaming consumption.

Will there be another VMAs?
Hell if I know. There was a time when I could have told you there’d be a thousand of them, but I don’t really have any control. I just love the notion of creating live TV with musicians. It’s so different from movies and scripted TV. Musicians are so individualistic and talented, and they do what they want to do. We give them all the toys and the best tech, audio, video, and screens, and then just let them go. It is so much fun. I hope that art form sticks around.