Sanada becomes first Japanese actor to win Emmys
Los Angeles: The Bear came back for seconds in a big way at the Emmys, scoring repeat wins on Sunday night four times — including best actor, best supporting actor and best supporting actress in a comedy.
The star of the FX show Jeremy Allen White won best actor in a comedy for the second straight year, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach repeated as best supporting actor. A surprise came when Liza Colón-Zayas won best supporting actor over major competition.
“How could I have thought it would be possible to be in the presence of Meryl Streep and Carol Burnett,” Colón-Zayas said as tears welled in her eyes as she accepted the award on the stage of the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. She is the first Latina to win in the category. “To all the Latinas who are looking at me,” she said, “keep believing and vote”.
White said backstage that he was watching in the wings as Colón-Zayas won and “that was just the greatest”. He also shouted out two acting wins the show had already scored at last weekend’s Creative Arts Emmy Awards, when Jamie Lee Curtis won best guest actress in a comedy for playing his mother, and Jon Bernthal won best guest actor for playing his big brother.
And the show’s creator, Christopher Storer, won best directing of a comedy series, an award handed out by reunited Happy Days co-stars Ron Howard and Henry Winkler. The Bear won six times, including most of the top comedy categories at the strike-delayed Emmys in January.
While the third season of FX’s The Bear has already dropped, the trio won their second Emmys for its second, in which White’s chef Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto attempts to turn his family’s grungy Chicago sandwich shop into an elite restaurant.
The father-son hosting duo of Eugene and Dan Levy in their monologue at the top of the show mocked the very dramatic The Bear being in the comedy category. “In honour of The Bear we will be making no jokes,” Eugene Levy said, to laughs.
Jean Smart won best actress in a comedy for Hacks. She won for all three seasons and has six Emmys overall. She beat nominees Ayo Edebiri, who as co-star of The Bear moved from supporting actress, which she won in January, to lead actress.
Coming into the show the big story was another FX show, Shogun, which had already taken the most Emmys in a single season with 14 at the Creative Arts ceremony. Shogun lost its first chance at winning on the main show on Sunday when Billy Crudup took best supporting actor in a drama over Tadanobu Asano for his role on the Apple TV+ series The Morning Show.
Shogun, the FX series about lordly politicking in feudal Japan, also lost out in the drama writing category to Slow Horses. Veteran screen star Hiroyuki Sanada made history by winning best actor, becoming the first Japanese actor to win Emmys.
If Shogun faces any competition for the best drama prize, it could come for the sixth and final season of The Crown, the only show among the nominees that has won before in a category recently dominated by the retired Succession. Elizabeth Debicki took best supporting actress in a drama for playing Princess Diana at the end of her life in the sixth and final season of the show.
“Playing this part, based on this unparalleled, incredible human being, has been my great privilege,” Debicki said. “It’s been a gift.”
Netflix’s darkly quirky British show Baby Reindeer scored big wins in the limited series category, including best writing for the show’s creator and star Richard Gadd, and best supporting actress for Jessica Gunning, who plays his tormentor. Baby Reindeer is based on a one man-stage show in which Gadd describes being sexually abused along with other emotional struggles.
“Ten years ago, I was down and out, I never ever thought I could get my life together,” Gadd said through tears as he accepted. “Here I am, just a decade later picking up one of the biggest writing awards in television.”
He added, “No matter how bad it gets, it always gets better.” The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly as Gadd has.
Streep wasn’t the only Oscar winner trumped by a little-known name. Robert Downey Jr, the reigning best supporting actor winner for Oppenheimer, was considered the favourite to win best supporting actor in a limited series for The Sympathizer, but that award went to Lamorne Morris for Fargo.
“Robert Downey Jr, I have a poster of you in my house!” Morris said from the stage as he accepted his first Emmy.
Yet another Academy Award winner, Jodie Foster, who could get her first Emmy for best actress in a limited series for True Detective: Night Country.
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.
