Culture

Here’s Everything Good, Bad and Weird You Missed At The 2017 Emmys

I hope you like women and Trump jokes!

by Matilda Dixon-Smith  18 September 2017
Emmys

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So, we all know the Emmys are not the best awards show. (The Golden Globes are the best awards show, because the celebrities can drink and it’s trashy. This is common knowledge.) Still, as TV becomes ever-ubiquitous in our culture, you’ve gotta ask yourself: just what happened at the Emmys this year?

It’s celebs, in glittery clothes, talking into microphones! There’s definitely stuff we can talk about. Let’s dive in, shall we?

I Hope You Like Women… 

Because they won outrageously big at this year’s Emmys — even though the odds were kinda stacked against them.

For example: there was only one woman nominated for an Outstanding Writing For A Comedy Series category, Lena Waithe, nominated alongside Master Of None creator and star Aziz Ansari for the season-two episode, ‘Thanksgiving’. And guess who won the award? That’s right! Waithe, whose stunning work on ‘Thanksgiving’ was duly rewarded, made history as the first black woman to win an Emmy award for comedy writing. Well deserved.

Waithe wasn’t the only woman smashing goals: Big Little Lies won BIG (… Little… Lies..), taking out almost every award for which it was nominated. The series, which was Executive Produced by Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman (who also won in her category: Outstanding Lead Actress In A Limited Series), accepted the award for Outstanding Limited Series on behalf of the show, and it was a truly beautiful moment for two women working pretty tirelessly at bringing female stories to the screen. “Bring women to the front of their own stories,” Reese crowed during her acceptance speech, “and make them the heroes of their own stories.” Too bloody right.

And The Handmaid’s Tale, Hulu’s go-girl Dystopian drama, based on Margaret Atwood’s novel, won for Outstanding Drama Series — up against some super tough competition. The spectacular-looking series also earned nods for writing and directing (though both gongs went to men in categories stacked against female talents). And Elisabeth Moss earned a well-deserved gong for her steely, intense, icon-making performance as Offred — her first Emmys win after 8 nomination. Nice!

Your Boyfriends Made History, Too

Lena Waithe wasn’t the only person making history at this year’s Emmys: yer boys Riz Ahmed and Donald Glover also took home iconic record-setting gongs.

Glover, who won big for his premiere series Atlanta, took home statues for Outstanding Actor In A Comedy Series and Outstanding Directing For A Comedy Series. Atlanta, which was the most transformative and transcendently good comedy on TV last year, narrowly missed out on a Best Comedy Series nod against the stiff copmetition of Emmy-favourite Veep (which… did not have its best season this year, tbh). Still, Glover made history as the first black person to win the Outstanding Directing gong. Incredible stuff.

Then Riz Ahmed became the first man of Asian descent to win an acting Emmy which… wow. That is an incredible (and depressing) statistic. But congratulations to Riz, who is an absolute knockout in his role on the HBO limited series The Night Of.

That Sean Spicer Mess

Is it just me, or is post-Comedy Channel Stephen Colbert kind of pretty bloody boring? I feel like he is. I miss old wacky Colbert. Like, he’s fine. Whatever. He hosted fine.

BUT — this new straight-laced CBS Colbert wants to make a celebrity out of Sean Spicer. I am not down with that. As we reported earlier today, Colbert rolled Spicer out for a bit as part of his opening monologue, proving once and for all that we are never lacking in empathy when it comes to a powerful white man trying to redeem himself. Ugh.

The Skarsgards Can Get It

Only a Skarsgard could plant a smooch on Nicole Kidman in front of her husband and get away with it, I swear. The handsome Skarsgard bro, who played Kidman’s abusive husband Perry onscreen in HBO’s Big Little Lies, shared a tres scandalous full-bodied smooch with his co-star. While Keith Urban looked on and… clapped?

Fair play, Kidman is a hot hot babe and Skarsgard rocks that moustache like no one I’ve ever seen. In his acceptance speech for his Best Supporting Actor award (the win is what prompted Kidman to give him the excited smooch), Skarsgard thanked Kidman and co. “for making this boy feel like one of the girls”. Which, adorable.

Whatever, man, I am all for this. Keep it real, keep it loose. Kiss each other’s spouses! Just get it done before the nuclear apocalypse hits.

Tituss Burgess Didn’t Win… But He WON

When Junkee did a round-up of this year’s Emmy nominations, I called Tituss Burgess’s Titus Andromedon (from Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt) the “comedy performance of the year”, and I stand by that. So I was a little rankled (and so were you, be honest), when Burgess lost out to Alec Baldwin’s Trump impersonation on SNL. TITUSS WAS ROBBED!

And you know what? In true Titus fashion, Burgess showed the entire Emmy viewership just how wrong they were to pass him over by playing the best cyborg-robot TV has ever seen.

Appearing alongside Jeffrey Wright in one of Colbert’s mid-show sketches, Burgess played a Westworld cyborg drinking a cocktail and drawling “Beep bop, bloop… whatever”, while Colbert stripped down to nearly nothing (like all the Westworld bots, who spend an astonishing amount of time nakey on that show!).

Give. Him. Every. Emmy.

#Retflix

Retta is probably the best person on the internet. So pretty smart of Netflix to get her to take over their Twitter account for the night to live-tweet the whole Emmys experience.

And Retta, who we don’t see enough of post-Parks and Rec, did not disappoint, fam. She absolutely took the opportunity to start as much shit as she could.

The woman was all over every little thing in the absolute best way: calling out the Spicer disaster, commiserating with Tituss Burgess (and his “I can’t believe I didn’t win” face), and fangirling aa much as any of us would over Dolly Parton, Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda sharing a stage.

Someone hire Retta and put her on my TV. I miss her.

Celebrities… They’re Just Like Us!

Like us, celebs have phones and Instagram accounts. And like us, celebs find the presence of other celebs pretty cool. So events like the Emmys are a veritable bounty of cute celeb selfies. Like seat mates Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin (iconic):

And the “losers’ club”, led by Tony Hale and Matt Walsh (who lost out to Alec Baldwin for an Emmy):

And, undoubtedly the winner, this iconic pic of RuPaul, Gina Rodriguez and a healthy snack:

Magical stuff, kids.

Fashun!

So, this is what we’re all here for — the fashun. Fashun is the best and most important part of any awards ceremony. Who wore what? How did they wear it? How could they wear it? What item of your grandmother’s furniture did it remind you of?

First off, Reese Witherspoon went to the Emmys dressed as Elle Woods surprising her boyfriend with a sports coat and *nothing else* on Valentine’s Day. It’s wild; I love it.

And Millie Bobby Brown absolutely killed it in a tea-length ballerina extravaganza. Which sounds like it could be awful but goddamn it was chic and paired with seriously sassy-fresh styling. That girl is just kicking kid goals left, right and centre.

Whereas the rest of the Stranger Things team — that pesky band of Red Carpet Tricksters — decided to show up in what I’m guessing is a visual representation of The Beatles back catalogue. Don’t kids wear the darndest things!

Sarah Paulson continued to be possibly the best person alive today in this sequined retro princess-killer Carolina Herrera look that reminded you she is the best and only possible sequin-wearer among us.

And Gabrielle Union… well. The is the Bad Fairy Queen of all our dreams. I am a humble ghost in her presence.

Ole top of the wedding cake asses… #Emmys

A post shared by Gabrielle Union-Wade (@gabunion) on

And I feel like Jessica Biel is in the running for some kind of Most Extra Person Alive award, because here she is looking every bit as wild as her alter-ego in season four of BoJack Horseman. This is the kind of flashy shit I wish celebs would dare to wear more often. Props to you, girl. <3 <3

But holy crap, you know who won the red carpet this year? Donald Glover, fashionisto of my heart, rocking this purple suit and that pretty face he has. Swoon.

Oh, my loins!!!

The Winners

Drama

Outstanding Drama Series: The Handmaid’s Tale

Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series: Elisabeth Moss, The Handmaid’s Tale

Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series: Sterling K. Brown, This Is Us

Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series: John Lithgow, The Crown

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series: Ann Dowd, The Handmaid’s Tale

Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series: Reed Morano, The Handmaid’s Tale

Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series: Bruce Miller, The Handmaid’s Tale, “Offred”

Comedy

Outstanding Comedy Series: Veep

Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series: Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Veep

Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series: Donald Glover, Atlanta

Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series: Alec Baldwin, Saturday Night Live

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series: Kate McKinnon, Saturday Night Live

Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series: Donald Glover, Atlanta

Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series: Aziz Ansari and Lena Waithe, Master of None, “Thanksgiving”

Limited Series 

Outstanding Limited Series: Big Little Lies

Outstanding Actress in a Limited Series or Movie: Nicole Kidman, Big Little Lies

Outstanding Actor in a Limited Series or Movie: Riz Ahmed, The Night Of

Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or a Movie: Alexander Skarsgard, Big Little Lies

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or a Movie: Laura Dern, Big Little Lies

Outstanding Directing for a Limited Series, Movie, or a Dramatic Special: Jean-Marc Vallée, Big Little Lies

Outstanding Writing for a Limited Series, Movie, or a Dramatic Special: Charlie Brooker, Black Mirror: San Junipero

Other

Outstanding Variety Sketch Series: Saturday Night Live

Outstanding Variety Talk Series: Last Week Tonight With John Oliver

Outstanding Reality Competition Program: The Voice

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Matilda Dixon-Smith is Junkee’s Staff Writer. She tweets at @mdixonsmith.