Shogun and Hacks win top series Emmy Awards, Shogun actors get historic victories

Hacks won the comedy series at Sunday’s Emmy Awards, topping The Bear, which took home several of the night’s honours.
Shogun won the best drama series win, collecting a whopping 18 Emmys for its first season, just one of several historic wins.
Hiroyuki Sanada won best actor in a drama for Shogun on Sunday night (Monday morning, Singapore time) at the Emmy Awards, and Anna Sawai won best actress as they became the first two Japanese actors to win Emmys.
Their wins gave the FX series momentum going into one of the night’s top awards, where Shogun won best drama series.
The Bear came back for seconds in a big way at the ceremony, scoring repeat wins four times including best actor, best supporting actor and best supporting actress in a comedy, while British upstart Baby Reindeer won four of its own, including best limited series.
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.”
Netflix’s darkly quirky British show Baby Reindeer scored big wins in the limited series category, including best actor and best writing for the show’s creator and star Richard Gadd and best supporting actress for Jessica Gunning, who plays his tormentor.
Accepting the best limited series award, Gadd urged the makers of television to take chances.
“The only constant across any success in television is good storytelling,” he said. “Good storytelling that speaks to our times. So take risks, push boundaries. Explore the uncomfortable. Dare to fail in order to achieve.”
Baby Reindeer is based on a one man-stage show in which Gadd describes being sexually abused along with other emotional struggles.
Accepting that award, he said, “no matter how bad it gets, it always gets better.”
Jodie Foster won her first Emmy to go with her two Oscars when she took best actress in a limited series for True Detective: Night Country.
The creator of The Bear was also a repeat winner. Christopher Storer took his second straight Emmy for directing, an award handed out by reunited Happy Days co-stars Ron Howard and Henry Winkler.
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. It could still win more Sunday night including best comedy series.
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.
The two Canadian stars of Schitt’s Creek were among the big winners of the pandemic-era Emmys in 2020.
Jean Smart won best actress in a comedy for Hacks. She has won for all three seasons of Hacks, and has six Emmys overall.
Coming into the show the big story was Shogun, which had already taken the most Emmys for a show in a single season with 14 at the precursors Creative Arts Emmys.
But well into the show, it had managed only one Emmy, for directing. Billy Crudup took best supporting actor in a drama for The Morning Show over Tadanobu Asano of Shogun, setting the tone early.
The FX series about lordly politicking in feudal Japan, also lost out in the drama writing category to Slow Horses.
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 Crown.
“Playing this part, based on this unparalleled, incredible human being, has been my great privilege,” Debicki said. “It’s been a gift.”
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.
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.