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Emmy winner slammed for hypocrisy over on-air proposal

Some Broadway insiders bristled when director Glenn Weiss made a surprise proposal to his longtime girlfriend on Monday night during his Emmys acceptance speech.

“While TV audiences seemed enthralled with Glenn Weiss’ on-air proposal to his longtime girlfriend, Jan Svendsen . . . Broadway types were less than thrilled by the display,” one theater pro told us. “Glenn has produced and directed the Tonys for CBS for many years, and is known as an unforgiving stickler when it comes to keeping acceptance speeches to the allotted 45 seconds.”

Weiss, who’s directed 18 Tonys telecasts, melted the Emmy audience’s heart by popping the question from the stage after he won.

But a theater exec groused to Page Six that behind the camera at the Tonys, “every year, Glenn gives this pompous speech to all the nominees, lecturing everyone about how the clock starts the second your name is called and that going long is unfair to your fellow nominees because it eats time for everyone whose categories come later in the evening.”

The pro added, “Leave it to him to completely flout his own rule in order to grab as much attention as humanly possible for him and his girlfriend.” The source alleged Weiss’ speech clocked in at “just under three minutes.”

A rep for Weiss did not get back to us, but the Emmy winner acknowledged the irony of the time issue to Jimmy Kimmel, saying in an interview, “I was actually really worried about that, having been in the seat and [knowing] how those shows function . . . So, I really kind of ran through what I wanted to say in my head and then as the night was going on, and I saw how much time . . . I kept editing and filtering and just hoping it wouldn’t go too long.”

Page Six reported this week that some members of Weiss’ family also were not thrilled by the on-air proposal, and that his 17- and 21-year-old daughters were “completely shocked and blindsided,” sources said, as they watched on TV.