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Those who felt that the three hours of the Emmys ceremony itself wasn't a self-mortification ritual sufficiently harrowing to atone for a year of their TV-watching sins may have tuned in to the supplemental torture of NBC's pre-show coverage, where they could have witnessed obviously tense Emmy nominee (and eventual winner) Jeremy Piven have the following testy exchange with red carpet inquisitor Billy Bush:

Bush then asked Piven if, given that Piven lives in Malibu, whether he had laid eyes on Brangelina's baby Shiloh. Piven said he hadn't, explaining that he had "116 other things to do...I don't go hunting for celebrity babies, thank you, Billy."

Undeterred, or clearly not getting the message, Bush then asked if he'd seen Suri Cruise. Piven finally lost his patience. "You need another job. You have potential as a human being," said Piven, not at all hiding his irritation. "This may not be right for you. Seriously — can you focus on other things?"

As you can clearly see from our collage of a post-victory Piven, his mood lightened considerably once the statuette was in hand and he didn't have to worry about smiling through a potential Sean Hayes acceptance speech while a camera scanned his face for any telltale signs of letdown. Had Billy Bush approached him with his silly questions while Piven was manic with triumphant glee, he probably could've gotten the actor to invite him and fellow pre-show softballer Ryan Seacrest to come back to his hotel suite to "double team my new girlfriend Emmy" while he delivered a half-hour riff on what a celebrity baby-hunting expedition might look like.

[Photos: Getty Images]