On a night that seemed it would be all about awarding Game of Thrones and Veep, two of the biggest series of the last decade who ended their respective runs this year, the Emmy Awards instead became a night full of surprises.
Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who had two of the most original and well-written series showcasing at the awards this year with Killing Eve and Fleabag, swept the major comedy categories with the latter — much to her and the audience’s surprise. It was Veep that was expected to sweep, having done so nearly every season it’s been on the air. But by taking a one-year hiatus when lead Julia Louis-Dreyfus (who has won five Emmys for her Veep performance) sought cancer treatment, it’s as if the show fell off the radar for voters.
Fleabag scored awards for directing, writing, editing, casting and, of course, writing and lead actress for Waller-Bridge and, finally, outstanding comedy series. A low-budget BBC series toppling an industry favourite like Louis-Dreyfus and Veep suggests this was not only a year of incredible television across the board, but that Emmy voters are finally taking notice of different, more original work.
In her hilarious speech, Waller-Bridge summed it up: “It’s just really wonderful to know that a dirty, pervy, angry, messed-up woman can make it to the Emmys, so thank you so much.”
From there, it only got more chaotic, with Jodie Comer beating her Killing Eve co-star Sandra Oh who left empty-handed for the second time despite massive buzz; Michelle Williams winning for Fosse/Verdon over Patricia Arquette, who had been collecting every other trophy for her work in Escape at Dannemora; the 21-year-old Jharrel Jerome winning for When They See Us and honouring the Central Park Five in a tearful moment on-stage; Chernobyl scoring for limited series; and Julia Garner beating out nearly every Game of Thrones actress for her performance in Ozark, which absolutely no one watches.
But it was Billy Porter who had the most triumphant win for his outstanding work in FX’s Pose, making history as the the first openly gay black man to win a lead actor award (also making him one win away from an EGOT). He opened his emotional speech declaring, “The category is love y’all!” And then quoted James Baldwin, saying, “It took many years of vomiting up all the filth that I had been taught about myself, and halfway believed, before I could walk around this Earth like I had the right to be here.” He added, “I have the right. You have the right. We all have the right.”
But don’t cry for Veep or Game of Thrones. Both series received awkward, brief tributes, in which each respective cast member was brought on stage after a montage of their series work. Louis-Dreyfus got in a solid quip, too, for her final moment as Selina Meyer, deadpanning, “I’m sorry. I was told I would be up here alone.”
Veep may have gone home empty-handed, but Game of Thrones did win the biggest award of the evening: Outstanding Drama Series. It gave creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss one last opportunity to commemorate a decade of (mostly) great storytelling.
In other words, everyone had their moment, but no one more than the women. Especially Williams, who, in the speech of the night, said: “The next time a woman and especially a woman of colour, because she stands to make 52 cents to the dollar compared to her white male counterpart, tells you what she needs in order to do her job, listen to her, believe her because one day she might stand in front of you and say thank you for allowing her to succeed bc of her workplace environment and not in spite of it.”
Arquette spoke up on behalf of her sister Alexis, a transgender activist who died in 2016, declaring, “I’m in mourning every day of my life, Alexis, and I will be the rest of my life for you until we change the world so that trans people are not persecuted. And give them jobs. They are human beings, let’s give them jobs. Let’s get rid of this bias that we have everywhere.”
Alex Borstein, too, who won for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel the second year in a row, opened the evening with powerful words when she thanked her mother and grandmother, both Holocaust survivors. “My grandmother was in line to be shot into a pit,” she began. When her mother asked, “What happens if I step out of line?”, the guard responded, “I don’t have the heart to shoot you, but somebody will.” So she did, and she survived, Borstein adding, “[So] I am here and my children are here. … So step out of line, ladies. Step out of line!”
It’s the wins and speeches that made the ceremony, which went hostless for only the fourth time in the show’s history and, for a show meant to honour the best in television, it ironically showed. While plenty of the presenters made for dynamic duos (someone cast Waller-Bridge and Bill Hader in a slapstick rom-com immediately), the clumsy, pre-written jokes left something to be desired.
Actor Thomas Lennon, who served as an Emmys “commentator,” could have added some commercial-break humour, but was instead left rambling and often trailing off at every break, of which there were many throughout the show’s three-hour run-time.
The brief skits, too, were sloppy and charmless, including a musical number featuring Adam Devine and a melodramatic skit meant to showcase the progress of pitching and shooting a film.
At every opportunity, there was a relentless riff on running hostless, with everyone from Homer Simpson to Anthony Anderson left to “pitch in.” When previous Emmy hosts and late-night rivals Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert took to the stage to kick-off the evening, they quipped, “You know who the real victims are, here? Us.”
That was certainly true, but after joking they could easily be replaced by Alexa, her voice did indeed jump in and present the nominees — a sure sign that, yes, it can get worse.
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September 23, 2019 at 09:02PM
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