‘Shogun’ and ‘Hacks’ make history at the 76th Emmy Awards
‘Shogun’ had historic wins in an epic 18-Emmy first season. ‘Hacks’ scored an upset for best comedy on what was still a four-trophy night for ‘The Bear’ and ‘Baby Reindeer’ had a holiday at the ‘76th Emmy Awards’ that had some surprising swerves.
‘Shogun’, the ‘FX’ series about power struggles in feudal Japan, won the ‘Best Drama Series’ award. Hiroyuki Sanada won the ‘Best Actor in a Drama’ award and Anna Sawai won the ‘Best Actress’ award. Sanada was the first Japanese actor to win an ‘Emmy’, while Sawai became the second just moments later.
“‘Shogun’ taught me when we work together, we can make miracles,” Sanada said in his acceptance speech on the stage of the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. Along with 14 ‘Emmys’ that it claimed at the precursor ‘Creative Arts Emmys’, it had an unmatched performance with 18 overall for one season.
‘Hacks’ was the surprise winner of its first ‘Best Comedy Series’ award, topping ‘The Bear’ which most had expected to take after big wins earlier in the evening. Jean Smart won her third ‘Best Actress in a Comedy’ award for the third season of Max’s ‘Hacks’, in which her stand-up comic character Deborah Vance tries to make it on late-night TV. Smart has six ‘Emmys’ overall.
Despite losing out on the night's biggest comedy prize after winning it for its first season at January’s strike-delayed ceremony, FX’s ‘The Bear’ star Jeremy Allen White won the ‘Best Actor in a Comedy’ award for the second straight year and Ebon Moss-Bachrach repeated as ‘Best Supporting Actor’.
Liza Colón-Zayas was the surprise ‘Best Supporting Actress’ winner in a competition that included Meryl Streep, becoming the first Latina to win in the category. “To all the Latinas who are looking at me,” she said, her eyes welling with tears. “Keep believing and vote.”
Netflix’s darkly quirky ‘Baby Reindeer’ won the ‘Best Limited Series’ award. Creator and star Richard Gadd won for his lead acting and his writing and Jessica Gunning, who plays his tormentor, won the ‘Best Supporting Actress’ award.
Accepting the series award, Gadd urged the makers of television to take chances. “The only constant across any success in television is good storytelling. Good storytelling that speaks to our times. So, take risks and push boundaries. Explore the uncomfortable. Dare to fail in order to achieve,” he said.
Jodie Foster won her first ‘Emmy’ to go with her two Oscars when she took the ‘Best Actress in a Limited Series’ award for ‘True Detective: Night Country’. Foster played a crusty sheriff investigating a mass killing in the round-the-clock dark of an Alaskan winter on the ‘HBO’ show. While her castmate Kali Reis missed out on becoming the first Indigenous actor to win an ‘Emmy’ in the supporting category, Foster praised her and the show’s collaboration with Indigenous contributors.
“The Inupiaq and Inuit people of northern Alaska told us their stories and they allowed us to listen. That was just a blessing. It was love, love, love and when you feel that, then something amazing happens,” Foster said.
Greg Berlanti, a producer and writer on shows including ‘Dawson’s Creek’ and ‘Everwood’, received the ‘Television Academy’s Governors Award’ for his career-long contributions to improving LGBTQ visibility on television. He talked about a childhood when there was little such visibility.
The long decline of traditional broadcast TV at the ‘Emmys’ continued, with zero wins between the four broadcast networks.
In the monologue that opened the ‘ABC’ telecast, Dan Levy, who hosted with his father and ‘Schitt’s Creek’ co-star Eugene Levy, called the ‘Emmys’ ‘broadcast TV’s biggest night for honouring movie stars on streaming services’.
Though other than Foster, movie stars didn’t fare too well. Her fellow Oscar winners Streep and Robert Downey Jr had been among the favourites but came up empty. “Robert Downey Jr, I have a poster of you in my house!” Lamorne Morris, who beat Downey for the ‘Best Supporting Actor in a Limited Series’ award, said from the stage as he accepted his first ‘Emmy’.
The evening managed to meet many expectations but included several swerves like the win for ‘Hacks’. “We were really shocked. We were truly, really surprised,” ‘Hacks’ co-creator Jen Statsky, who also won for writing, said after the show.
‘Shogun’ got off to a quiet start, missing out on early awards and not getting its first trophy until past the halfway point. Still, it shattered the record for ‘Emmys’ for one season previously held by the 2008 limited series ‘John Adams’ in 2008. And its acting wins would have been hard to imagine before the series became an acclaimed phenomenon.
Sanada is a 63-year-old longtime screen star whose name is little known outside Japan, even if his face is through Hollywood films like ‘The Last Samurai’ and ‘John Wick Chapter 4’. Sawai, 32, who was born in New Zealand and moved to Japan as a child, is significantly less known in the US. She wept when she accepted the best actress award. “When you saw me cry on stage, it was probably the 12th time I cried today. It was just mixed emotions, wanting everyone to win all that. I may cry again now,” Sawai said backstage.
‘The Bear’ finished second with 11 overall ‘Emmys’, including guest acting wins at the ‘Creative Arts’ ceremony for Jamie Lee Curtis and Jon Bernthal.
Elizabeth Debicki took the ‘Best Supporting Actress in a Drama’ award for playing Princess Diana at the end of her life in the sixth and final season of ‘The Crown’. “Playing this part, based on this unparalleled, incredible human being, has been my great privilege. It’s been a gift,” Debicki said in her acceptance.
Several awards were presented by themed teams from TV history, including sitcom dads George Lopez, Damon Wayans and Jesse Tyler Ferguson and TV moms Meredith Baxter, Connie Britton and Susan Kelechi Watson.
