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Welcome to the Wi-Fi Emmy, hosted by Jimmy Kimmel in a nearly empty stadium.
Lights! Camera! And… hopefully the Wi-Fi works.
The 72nd Emmy Awards on Sunday at 8 pm ET will be nothing like previous ceremonies celebrating the year’s accomplishments on television and broadcast.
Red carpet? Cancelled. Actors sitting shoulder to shoulder in an auditorium as envelopes are being opened? Not
Jimmy Kimmel will host the unpredictable ceremony from a nearly empty Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles as more than 100 nominees watch and broadcast themselves from locations ranging from Berlin to Fayetteville, Georgia.
The producers of the show, which airs on ABC and Hulu Live, have encouraged the nominees to dress however they want and feel free to have their children and family pets with them on the couch when the winners are announced.
The impromptu quality can heighten interest at an awards night that has become stale in recent years. Despite the rise of scripted entertainment, the Emmy ratings have dropped dramatically. The show drew 6.9 million viewers last year, a low.
In an effort to make the broadcast as smooth as possible, the Television Academy has sent a kit to each nominee with instructions on how to put together a DIY studio. It comes complete with a light ring, microphone, laptop, and camera. After that, it’s up to the nominees and their Wi-Fi signals to do the dirty work of broadcasting live footage to viewers’ screens.
“We hope there is not a major drop,” said Guy Carrington, executive producer of the Emmys, in an interview.
About a dozen presenters and entertainers will join Kimmel on a stage built over the Staples Center basketball court. The show moved from its regular venue, the Microsoft Theater, to the home of the Los Angeles Lakers and the Los Angeles Clippers, because the arena has the technological means to accommodate dozens of remote broadcasts.
“We’ve all done some of the biggest awards shows in history, but none of us have done anything on this scale before,” said Reginald Hudlin, executive producer.
In addition to the technological challenges, the ceremony will likely include one-off acceptance speeches. In the context of a fiery presidential campaign, the winners can address issues including a nationwide settling of scores on race relations and police brutality; a pandemic that has killed nearly 200,000 Americans; and a changing climate that contributed to the wildfires that ravaged the west coast.
The ceremony usually lasts three hours, but the producers did not want to specify the execution time.
“Who knows?” said Ian Stewart, executive producer. “It could be way down. It could be over. It may be on time. I think that’s unlikely. “
Logan Roy will fight ‘Baby Yoda’ in the best drama category.
Oh sure: there will also be winners and losers.
HBO’s operatic drama “Succession” is the favorite for the most prestigious award, best drama. This chronicle of a ruthless clan won best drama awards at the Golden Globes and the Television Critics Association Awards earlier this year, and the show’s creator, Jesse Armstrong, won the Emmy for best dramatic writing. in 2019.
Other contenders have emerged to take the place of “Game of Thrones,” the HBO epic that won this category a record four times. Netflix has a couple of possible winners in “The Crown” and “Ozark.” And don’t discount Baby Yoda’s hit, “The Mandalorian.” The action-adventure series Disney + won several Technical Creative Arts Emmy Awards, which were presented last week, and the voters of the Television Academy do not wrinkle their noses at the mass entertainment.
The limited series category has become the glamor zone of the Emmy ceremony, with its big stars and blockbuster budgets. This year, a couple of shows that faced social problems are at the helm: HBO’s “Watchmen” and the FX and Hulu miniseries “Mrs. America.”
“Watchmen,” Damon Lindelof’s ambitious take on the comic book genre, is the most likely winner. In addition to garnering the most nominations of any series this year, it recently won the Television Critics Association award for best series. At the same event, “Mrs. America, ”an examination of the battle for the Equal Rights Amendment, was excluded.
Regina King, the star of “Watchmen”, is also the favorite to beat Cate Blanchett, “Mrs. America”, in the category of best actress in a miniseries. If King wins, he would take home his fourth Emmy statuette.
Will it be a great ending for ‘Schitt’s Creek’?
In a story of recent show business lore, “Breaking Bad” plodded on cable channel AMC for years, receiving critical acclaim and low ratings. Then reruns began streaming on Netflix, and by the time of its final season, millions of viewers began watching “Breaking Bad” on AMC, eventually winning the Emmy Award for Best Drama.
“Schitt’s Creek” expects a similar arch.
The Canadian comedy, created by Dan and Eugene Levy, which airs on Pop TV in the United States, had little more than a cult following before Netflix began streaming its past seasons. Now, months after the end of the series, “Schitt’s Creek” is a favorite to win the best comedy. Last week, the show won best casting for a comedy at the Creative Arts Emmys, and the winner of that award has won best comedy in each of the last five years.
But Television Academy voters love Amazon’s “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” the 2018 Emmy winner for Best Comedy. Amy Sherman-Palladino’s midcentury film had the second-most Emmy nominations. of any program this year. “Insecure,” the HBO comedy created by Issa Rae and Larry Wilmore, is also in the running.
Olivia Colman could win her first Emmy. Laura Linney could grab her fifth.
Olivia Colman, an Oscar and Golden Globe winner who plays the title role in Netflix’s “The Crown,” will face four-time Emmy winner Laura Linney, a star of Netflix’s “Ozark,” in the category of best actress. Other nominees include Jennifer Aniston (“The Morning Show”), last year’s winner of best drama, Jodie Comer (“Killing Eve”), her co-star Sandra Oh, and last year’s star Zendaya (“Euphoria “).
Brian Cox and Jeremy Strong, who play the father and son of an enemy dynasty in “Succession,” will compete with each other in real life as the top nominees for best actor in a drama. If they split the votes, Jason Bateman, an “Ozark” star, could be the beneficiary.
Look for some Emmy love for Catherine O’Hara and Eugene Levy, nominated in the leading actor comedy categories for their roles as the husband and wife duo on “Schitt’s Creek.” The show’s two stars have won Emmy Awards before, but not since the early 1980s, when they were recognized as writers for their work on the groundbreaking Canadian comedy series “SCTV.”
In fact, only a few series have won the awards for best comedy and best acting in the same year, including “30 Rock”, (Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin) “All in the Family” (Carroll O’Connor, Jean Stapleton) and “The Dick Van Dyke Show” (Dick Van Dyke, Mary Tyler Moore).
‘SNL’ continues its streak as an Emmy machine.
It’s getting harder and harder to remember a time when “Saturday Night Live” had fallen out of favor with Emmy voters, as it had for years.
But NBC giant Lorne Michaels’ recent winning streak continues. “SNL” won the award for best sketch variety series for the fourth year in a row, and also swept guest starring honors.
Maya Rudolph won Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy for her portrayal of Kamala Harris. And Eddie Murphy received guest star honors for her hosting duties on the same episode, in which she repeated classic characters like Gumby, Buckwheat and Mr. Robinson. It was her first Emmy win. Don Roy King also won Best Directing in a Variety Sketch Series for his work on the episode hosted by Murphy.
“SNL” is the most decorated series in Emmys history, having won 73 Primetime Emmys.
Cherry Jones (“Succession”) and Ron Cephas Jones (“This Is Us”) won the Guest Actress in Drama Awards. RuPaul from “RuPaul’s Drag Race” won the award for best host of a reality series for the fifth time, setting a record in the category.
All of these awards were presented during the week-long virtual Creative Arts Emmy ceremonies. Now that technical and guest-staring honors are out of the way, “The Mandalorian” and “Watchmen” are tied for the lead in total Emmy wins, with 7 apiece for Sunday.
In recent years, Netflix and HBO have fought close battles with each other on the big night, and each has won 19 Emmys so far this week.
23 final prizes will be awarded during Sunday’s ceremony.
Is it Trevor Noah’s year to win for best variety talk series?
For the past 17 years, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and John Oliver have won the award for best variety talk series, and Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight” won the category four years in a row.
But is any alteration brewing?
Trevor Noah, the host of “The Daily Show” since 2015, has won over viewers and critics with his remote episodes during the pandemic, particularly for his emphasis on police brutality and race amid nationwide protests after the murder of George Floyd. If Noah wins, it would be a boon to Comedy Central and a boost for a host who once faced skepticism that he could make “The Daily Show” his own.
