The 70th annual primetime Emmy awards were handed out at in Los Angeles on Monday night. Amazon’s The Marvelous Mrs Maisel dominated the evening with five wins, The Hollywood Reporter said. The comedy series, which follows the attempts of housewife Midge Maisel (Rachel Brosnahan) to forge a career in stand-up comedy, won the awards for Comedy Series apart from trophies for writing and directing. Brosnahan won the award for the Lead Actress in a Comedy Series and Alex Borstein, her stand-up coach, won the award for the Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series.
The awards show was mostly an apolitical affair, The Guardian reported, but quoted Brosnahan as saying in her speech, “One of the most important ways to find and use your voice is to vote.” The mention of the MeToo movement was also largely absent, reported The New York Times.
Saturday Night Live comedians Colin Jost and Michael Che hosted the evening. The opening act was performed by Kate McKinnon, Ricky Martin, Titus Burgess and RuPaul who presented a skit and a song that put the spotlight on Hollywood’s diversity problem.
FX’s The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story won three awards, followed by HBO’s Game of Thrones, which won two. Actor Peter Dinklage won the award in the supporting actor category and the series took the best drama series award too. In his acceptance speech, Dinklage thanked the show’s creators David Benioff and Dan Weiss, said The New York Times. “Thank you Dave and Dan for changing my life. I cannot walk down the street anymore.”
Netflix’s Godless and The Crown and FX’s The Americans also won two awards each. NBC’s Saturday Night Live won the variety sketch series category while HBO’s Last Week Tonight bagged the variety talk series.
Hulu’s critically acclaimed series The Handmaid’s Tale, which won five Emmys last year, went empty-handed this year, The Hollywood Reporter added, as did FX’s celebrated series Atlanta, which was nominated in 16 categories.
HBO and Netflix were tied with 23 Emmy awards each, including the ones won at Creative Arts Emmys last week.
The evening took a surprising turn when Glenn Weiss, who won the award for best director of a variety special, used the opportunity to propose to his girlfriend Jan Svendsen. “You wonder why I don’t like to call you my girlfriend?” Weiss said. “Because I want to call you my wife.”
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