Marvel superhero series WandaVision was the big winner at the MTV Movie & TV Awards on Sunday, as Sacha Baron Cohen poked fun at his recent Oscars loss, with a little help from Borat, Bruno and the gang.
WandaVision, which takes characters from Marvel's record-breaking superhero blockbuster films and shifts the action to the Disney+ streaming platform, won four awards at the Los Angeles ceremony, including Best Show.
The oddball-but-acclaimed series set in a bizarre, sitcom-inspired world also bagged Best Performance in a Show for its star Elizabeth Olsen, Best Villain for Kathryn Hahn, and the Best Fight award.
"This is bananas, this whole thing, this whole year has been so trippy," said Hahn, one of several stars to refer to the pandemic's impact, with the live in-person award show taking place in Hollywood a year after the previous iteration was cancelled.
Chadwick Boseman, who surprisingly failed to posthumously win best actor for Ma Rainey's Black Bottom at last month's Oscars, was honoured for Best Performance in a Movie.
The awards do not differentiate between male and female actors, and have been honouring Hollywood since 1992 with golden popcorn statuettes for unconventional categories, including Best Kiss.
Taking place at the start of the summer blockbuster season, and voted for online by the public, the awards tend to recognise more mainstream and commercial favourites than other ceremonies.
To All the Boys: Always and Forever, the conclusion to Netflix's trilogy of teenage romantic comedies adapted from Jenny Han's young adult novels, was named Best Movie.
Baron Cohen won a non-competitive award, accepting it in a video that showed him arguing with his own various comic (and frequently inappropriate) personas, such as Borat and Ali G.
"Right, before anyone else does it, I am officially cancelling myself," joked Baron Cohen.
"I was actually really looking forward to this after losing at the Oscars. You can keep it. Go on, you're a caricature," he told his Austrian fashionista alter-ego Bruno, handing over his statuette.
Baron Cohen had been nominated for Best Supporting Male in The Trial of the Chicago 7 and Best Adapted Screenplay for Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, but failed to win either Academy Award.
Scarlett Johansson was also honoured for her career by MTV on Sunday.
The inaugural MTV Movie and TV Awards: Unscripted event celebrating reality television will take place on Monday.
Full list of MTV Movie and TV Awards – Scripted winners:
Best Movie: To All the Boys: Always and Forever
Best Show: WandaVision
Best Performance in a Movie: Chadwick Boseman, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
Best Performance in a Show: Elizabeth Olsen, WandaVision
Best Hero: Anthony Mackie, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier
Best Kiss: Chase Stokes and Madelyn Cline, Outer Banks
Best Comedic Performance: Leslie Jones, Coming 2 America
Best Villain: Kathryn Hahn, WandaVision
Breakthrough Performance: Rege-Jean Page, Bridgerton
Best Fight: WandaVision, Wanda vs Agatha
Most Frightened Performance: Victoria Pedretti, The Haunting of Bly Manor
Best Duo: The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Falcon (Anthony Mackie) and Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan)
- Additional reporting from AFP
