The Morning After: Creative Emmy Award Winners
Sunday, September 13, 2015 at 1:28PM 
Andrew on the Emmy Awards, Round 1
Are there too many Emmy Award categories? On one hand, considering that that they need two separate ceremonies to get through all the winners, it seems a reasonable thesis. It lends a longness to the procedures but how nice that they recognise everything, and appreciate the difference between prostethic and non-prostethic make up, credits music, and title design?
Yesterday, eight days before the regular Emmys, the Creative Emmy awards were presented with prizes for costumes, choreography, production, design, music, guest acting and even TV movie. The creative Emmys, unlike craft prizes at the Oscars, are rarely a good indicator of what wins the big prizes. But let’s look at the notable winners and ponderwhether some of the surprises of last evening might carry over to next week's official ceremony.
Best TV Movie Bessie (HBO)
In an unusual move, the Emmy for TV movie (not a creative or technical prize) was handed out this evening, but congratulations to Queen Latifah and the production cast of Bessie for winning the title. Angelica did a great review of the film, which Latifah spent a decade bringing to the screen, so kudos to her. Can she make it a double win for Acting next week in one of the night’s strongest categories? We’ll see.
Best Guest Actor, Comedy Bradley Whitford in Transparent (Amazon)
Best Guest Actress, Comedy Joan Cusack in Shameless (Showtime)
Best Guest Actor, Drama Reg E. Cathey in House of Cards (Netflix)
Best Guest Actress, Drama Margo Martindale in The Americans (FX)
Best Guest Actor, Comedy Bradley Whitford in Transparent (Amazon)
Best Guest Actress, Comedy Joan Cusack in Shameless (Showtime)
Best Guest Actor, Drama Reg E. Cathey in House of Cards (Netflix)
Best Guest Actress, Drama Margo Martindale in The Americans (FX)
Usually it’s the comedy voters who get accused of lazy voting at the Emmy Awards, but both Guest performers in Comedy are handily excellent wins compared to the Drama ones. Amazon (and Transparent) wins its first acting Emmy Award for Bradley Whitford’s guest turn as Marcy May in Transparent. It’s a rich and evocative turn and a great complement to Jeffrey Tambour's Maura in the show’s flashback scenes. Sure, Whitford beats out an auspicious group including still Emmy-less Jon Hamm (Kimmy Schmidt) and Louis C.K. (Saturday Night Live) but it’s a well deserved win. Joan Cusack, on her fifth consecutive Emmy bid for Shameless, wins for Guest Actress in a comedy. It’s the first year she’s actually been a guest star (she's always campaigned there, though, despite being in every episode), and the first major award for this underrated comedienne.
The drama side of things was less impressive with great performers winning for unimpressive turns. When the nominees were announced, both Cathey and Martindale seemed like incidental inclusions. Martindale for example didn't have nearly as much to do this time as in previous seasons (Curiously, Martindale and Cusack were both nominated in this category two years ago before Shameless began submitting as a comedy.)
Outstanding Cinematography (Single Camera) Boardwalk Empire (HBO)
Outstanding Cinematography (Multi-Camera) Mike and Molly (CBS)
Outstanding Cinematography (TV Movie or Miniseries) Bessie (HBO)
Meanwhile my prediction of Boardwalk Empire triumphing in the cinematography race came true which means the show has won this prize for three of its five seasons. That's not just Emmy voter laziness, Boardwalk Empire truly being one of the most gorgeous looking shows on television moving beyond just Atlantic City for locations and providing excellent camerawork.
Outstanding Music Composition (Miniseries or TV-Movie Bessie (HBO)
Rachel Portman won this award, one of the handful of technical prizes Bessie earned. Oscar lovers will know Rachel Portman as the first female composer to win an Academy Award for Best Original Score (in 1996 for the Musical/Comedy score for Emma). Her last major impressive film work was for her moody work on Never Let Me Go. Hopefully she returns to film soon.
Outstanding Main Title Theme Music Transparent (Amazon)
One of three wins for Transparent, and my favourite of the ceremony. Transparent’s opening theme is gorgeous and so charming, like the show itself which I’m hoping takes the prize for Best Comedy next year (even if I think it should be in the Drama category)
Outstanding Casting for a Comedy Series Veep (HBO)
Outstanding Casting for a Drama Series Game of Thrones (HBO)
Outstanding Casting for a TV Movie or Miniseries Olive Kitteridge (HBO)
The wins for casting are Veep, Game of Thrones, Olive Kitteridge which we strong believe could be the winners for the top prizes next week. (A repeat of the 2009/2010 season when Modern Family, Mad Men, The Pacific won for Best Series and Casting). Meanwhile, I'm rooting for Transparent (a possiblity), Homeland (an impossibility), and probably The Honorable Woman (also impossible).
Other wins we’re excited/or curious about: Citizenfour follows its Oscar win with an Emmy win for Exceptional Merit in Documentary in filmmaking. We're still not quite sure how it manages to be eligible for both, but congratulations to it. Sweeney Todd: Live from Lincoln Centre (with Emmy Thompson) wins for Outstanding Special Class Program deservedly beating out this year’s Oscars, Tonys and Golden Globes ceremonies
The big winners of the night? Game of Thrones (8 wins), American Horror Story: Freakshow (5 wins), Bessie (4 wins), Transparent (3 wins). A full list of the winners and nominees are HERE.
Do the wins Transparent make you hopeful for it next week? Will Game of Thrones improve on its eight wins? What did you think of the Creative Emmy Award winners?
Reader Comments (11)
The Margo Martindale Emmy is hilarious. I like to think that the voters actually got around to watching The Americans, realized what a mistake they made snubbing it in the major categories, and gave it to Margo as a consolation prize. Maybe the show will win for writing, which would be great.
But poor Lois Smith, who actually deserved the award for her guest spot on The Americans...
Game of Thrones now needs only one more win to tie The West Wing's record for the most Emmys won in a single season (9), and with two more wins would break it.
The acting awards are hilarious (except Whitford). They should be renamed as Retroactive Emmys or something. The winners had barely nothing to do!
Love Transparent's main theme and I don't understand why the credits were not nominated.
American Crime should have won best casting.
One thing to note about Sweeney Todd is that Audra McDonald nabbed an Emmy for hosting. She is an Oscar away from EGOT glory.
Yeah, I love Martindale and it's GREAT that The Americans as a show has an Emmy now, but yeah the voters were lazy for that one.
Actually tracking the announcements last night was so wild. It started ok but once Cathey surprisingly won everything just went crazy and I was just so confused. The fact Game of Thrones is two awards away from breaking the record is awful because while I appreciate the show and loved it in earlier season it winning the big series prize for it's weakest season is so wrong. While I love the Whitford win it is yet again a Jon Hamm loss and with only two chances left to win this year I will be biting my nails all through the main ceremony next Sunday because he's now lost 14 times in 9 years and him not being rewarded for his work as Draper will be one of the great snubs of all time because that character/performance is conic.
Transparent winning these three awards hopefully is not a repeat of last year where Orange won 3 creative arts emmy awards and still lost to Modern Family. If GOT and MF are to win the series awards next week I just don't think I can believe in these voters that they watch the shows which is sad because if they actually watched tv they would see there are great shows the choose to ignore every year.
" Penny Dreadfull" should have won for cinematography, art direction and costume design
ok, how id Cicely Tyson NOT win for guest actess in a drama? I know HTGAWM is trash, but holy cow did she rise above that. She was absolutely captivating.
whoever casts the younger versions of the inmates in orange is the new black was robbed
Those wins for Transparent and Bessie delight me, but it's a shame the latter's win for TV movie wasn't aired and thus we missed seeing Queen Latifah and Dee Rees on stage.
Wonder why they gave out the TV Movie award already? It's messing up my Sunday pool.