Lights, camera, action! The 70th annual Primetime Emmy Awards were underway on the night of Monday, Sept. 17 at the Microsoft Theatre in Los Angeles, Calif. A plethora of talents and personalities were present at the event representing a great year in television. The nominations ranged from favorite Netflix originals such as “Stranger Things,” “The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” and “The Crown,” to favorite dramas such as NBC’s “This is Us” and HBO’s “Westworld.” The excitement continued as actors such as “Shameless’” William H. Macy were nominated as well as Milo Ventimiglia and Sterling K. Knight from “This is Us.”
The show kicked off at 8 p.m. EST with the hosts from “Saturday Night Live,” which received a nomination in the category of Outstanding Variety Sketch Series, Colin Jost and Michael Che. The night started off with an exciting win from Henry Winkler as outstanding supporting actor in a comedy series “Barry” which was his first Emmy win in his 40 years of being on TV! We then went on to see four wins for “The Handmaid’s Tale,” which dominated the Emmys in terms of nominations and awards won. Two wins in a row went out to Amy Sherman-Palladino for her directing and producing of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”. “Godless” received two Emmys in a row from Merritt Wever and Jeff Daniels in the Outstanding supporting actress and actor in a limited series categories.
The awards continued with exciting wins from some of our favorite actors, Claire Foy for best actress in a drama in “The Crown”, Bill Hader for best actor in a comedy in “Barry”, Rachel Brosnahan for best actress in a comedy for “ The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”, Matthew Rhys for best actor in a drama in “The Americans”, Thandie Newton for best supporting actress in a drama in “Westworld” and John Mulaney pulled out the win for writing for a variety special “John Mulaney: Kid Gorgeous at Radio City”.
More of America’s favorite television shows pulled out wins including, “Game of Thrones” for best supporting actor in a drama, which went to Peter Dinklage, ‘Saturday Night Live” for best variety sketch series, “RuPaul’s Drag Race” for best reality competition program, and perhaps the best part of the night when Glenn Weiss won for outstanding directing for a variety special and used his acceptance speech to propose to his girlfriend Jan Svendsen.
The night continued with great presenters such as John Legend and Chrissy Teigen, Sandra Oh, Tina Fey and Millie Bobby Brown and even got a heartwarming speech by none other than Betty White herself, who joked about being “the first woman on television.”
The night had some other great appearances and memorable moments. Maya Rudolph and Fred Armisen performed a bit for us where they answered questions posed by our hosts, “The Americans” finally brought home an Emmy for the first time, and Hannah Gadsby was arguably everyone’s favorite presenter with her entertaining speech where the comedian made a joke about presenting alone because men can’t take jokes. Viewers ate up the light and comedic presentation that the internet is now booming about.
The aftermath of the night still has people shocked that there were no political discussions from our “Saturday Night Live” hosts with the result that some people feel that the awards show was boring. There was also controversy over the lack of diversity amongst the winners of the different categories. There were successes for many actors, producers, directors, films, etc. at the Microsoft Theatre, however, in the end, the public overall was not extremely content with the night.
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