Candice Bergen took a not-so-subtle jab at JD Vance while accepting an award at the 2024 Emmy Awards on Sunday.
The 78-year-old “Murphy Brown” star was on stage to present the award for best actress in a comedy series when she referenced a storyline from the 1990s sitcom in which her character revealed she was pregnant and wanted to raise her child as a single mother. The storyline was condemned by critics at the time, including then-Vice President Dan Quayle, who did not approve of the unmarried protagonist having a child, arguing that it glorified the breakdown of traditional family values.
“For 11 years I had the great privilege of starring in a comedy series called Murphy Brown,” Bergen said on stage.
Candice Bergen speaks onstage during the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards at the Peacock Theater on September 15, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. ((Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images))
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“I was surrounded by brilliant and funny actors, had the best scripts to work with, and in a classic moment, my character was attacked by Vice President Dan Quayle when Murphy became pregnant and decided to raise the baby as a single mother.”
“Oh, how far we have come,” she continued. “Today, a Republican vice presidential candidate would never attack a woman for having children,” she joked.
“As they say, my work here is done. Meow!” Bergen added.
Her comment was obviously a reference to a statement made by Vance in 2021, when he stated that the US would indeed “by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are unhappy with their own lives and the choices they’ve made and therefore want to make the rest of the country unhappy too.” He has since defended the remark as a “joke” that was “intentionally misunderstood” by Democrats, but the refrain has become a popular attack line among Trump critics after the former president announced him as his running mate in July.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – SEPTEMBER 11: JD Vance attends Charity Day 2024 hosted by Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund at BGC Group in New York City on September 11, 2024. (Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images for the Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund))
Bergen’s comments apparently drew a comparison between Vance and Quayle, who, in a speech at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco in 1992, had criticized CBS and Bergen for “mocking the importance of fathers by bringing a child into the world alone and calling it just another lifestyle choice.”
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The speech, then called the “Murphy Brown speech,” was a response to the Rodney King riots that had devastated Los Angeles weeks earlier, which he blamed in part on the breakdown of the “traditional” family structure.
“It doesn’t help when, on prime-time television, Murphy Brown, a character who supposedly embodies today’s intelligent, well-paid professional woman, mocks the importance of fathers by giving birth to a child alone and describing it as just another lifestyle choice,” Quayle told the crowd.
Cast of MURPHY BROWN, the groundbreaking comedy about the eponymous news legend and her biting take on current events. ( (Photo by Robert Trachtenberg/CBS via Getty Images))
Bergen wasn’t the only celebrity to criticize Vance. Selena Gomez also referenced the comment in a speech at the 76th Emmy Awards, joking about what an “honor it is” to work with her two “Only Murders in the Building” co-stars Steve Martin and Martin Short, “who are so far from being childless cat ladies.”
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Taylor Swift signed her support for Kamala Harris as “Taylor Swift, childless cat lady” and included a photo of her holding her cat.
The Trump-Vance campaign team did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
Fox News’ Tracy Wright contributed to this report.
