“Saturday Night Live” was the big winner on the second night of the Creative Arts Emmy Awards, with the NBC sketch show's 50th season picking up 11 trophies as the ceremony honored behind-the-scenes crafts and specialty programming.
“SNL 50: The Anniversary Special,” the centerpiece of the season-long celebration, won seven Emmys including awards for directing, writing, hairstyling and editing. A related pop-up immersive experience took home an Emmy for emerging media, and regular episodes of the show earned three additional awards.
Kendrick Lamar and music director Tony Russell won for music direction of Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime show, giving Lamar his second Emmy. Former president Barack Obama won in the documentary narrator category for the third time, beating nominees that included Tom Hanks, Idris Elba and David Attenborough. Neither Lamar nor Obama attended the Peacock Theater presentation, and presenter Jordan Klepper quipped onstage that Obama “couldn’t be here tonight.”
HBO’s documentary “Pee-wee as Himself” won four awards, including best documentary, posthumously giving its star Paul Reubens his first primetime Emmy. Conan O’Brien won for his travel series “Conan O’Brien Must Go,” bringing his career total to six Emmys. Netflix’s “Conan O’Brien: The Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize For American Humor” won best variety special, overcoming contenders that included high-profile halftime specials from Lamar and Beyoncé. Beyoncé did secure a previously announced Emmy for costume design for her Netflix “Beyoncé Bowl” special.
Jimmy Kimmel accepted his fourth primetime Emmy for best host of a game show for his work on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” thanking the show’s original host, the late Regis Philbin. “Regis was the best at this,” Kimmel said backstage. “It is exciting to have this and to know that he has this same Emmy in his family’s collection somewhere.” “Jeopardy!” won best game show, and Alan Cumming won best host of a reality show for “The Traitors.”
The two-night Creative Arts Emmys hand out nearly 100 awards in highly specific categories, and the ceremony often produces notable but unconventional winners. The CBS Grammys telecast won for choreography, and ABC’s Oscars telecast — also hosted this year by O’Brien — won for production design.
The Television Academy presented the Governors Award to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, honoring an institution that helped fund PBS, NPR and hundreds of local stations even as federal support for the corporation has been withdrawn. Henry Louis Gates Jr., host of PBS’s “Finding Your Roots,” said during the presentation that “even an act of Congress cannot erase an indelible legacy.”
Reality programming winners included “Queer Eye” for best structured reality program and “Love on the Spectrum” for best unstructured reality program. The Creative Arts ceremony moved briskly, with 47 awards handed out on Sunday in about two and a half hours. The atmosphere was notably relaxed, with uncensored speeches and moments of levity from presenters; Sarah Silverman opened by calling the show “the Emmys for the people that the people who run the Emmys don’t think should be seen on network TV.”
Scripted series were honored Saturday, with “The Studio” winning nine early Emmys including best guest actor in a comedy for Bryan Cranston; “Severance” led dramatic categories with six awards, including best guest actress for Merritt Wever; and “The Penguin” won eight awards in limited series categories. Julie Andrews won her third Emmy at age 89 for voice-over work on “Bridgerton.”
The Creative Arts shows are edited into a single broadcast that will air on FXX on Saturday. The 77th Primetime Emmy Awards, hosted by Nate Bargatze, will air live on CBS the following day. This story was corrected to show that Barack Obama has won three Emmys, not two, and that Conan O’Brien won one Emmy Sunday, not two.