Australian Murray Bartlett wins Emmy as Hollywood toasts TV’s best

Mike White, the show’s creator and director, won a pair of Emmy Awards for best directing and writing. And performers from the show, Australians Murray Bartlett and Jennifer Coolidge, both received acting Emmys.

“Mike White, my God, thank you for giving me one of the best experiences of my life,” Bartlett said from the Emmys stage.

The 51-year-old Australian won best supporting actor in a limited series in his first Emmy nomination. IN The white lotus, he plays an initially mild-mannered concierge at a Hawaiian resort who is driven to drugs and madness by the guests he is tasked with receiving.

But HBO’s chronicles of the rich weren’t the only winners Monday night.

Ted Lasso, The Apple TV+ sports series won best comedy for the second year in a row as the tech giant continues its awards show. Apple TV+, which debuted in November 2019, won Best Picture at the Academy Awards (CODA) earlier this year. And Jason Sudeikis repeated as best actor in a comedy as a fish-out-of-water football coach in Ted Lasso.

There were other big moments at the comedy awards. Quinta Brunson, creator of the good-natured ABC workplace sitcom, Abbott Elementary, about a group of elementary school teachers at an underfunded elementary school in Philadelphia, won for best writing in a comedy. It was only the second time a black woman won the award (Lena Waithe was the first, in 2017, for Master of None).

In one of the night’s most electric moments, Sheryl Lee Ralph won Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy for her role in Abbott Elementary as a veteran teacher at the school. Ralph began his Emmy speech by singing “Endangered Species” by Dianne Reeves and received a standing ovation from the room full of nominees.

Her win was also historic: It was only the second time a black woman had won the award. The last time was in 1987, when Jackée Harry won for her role in the NBC sitcom 227.

This has been the most competitive Emmy season ever: Submissions for all categories are up, and 2022 is likely to set another record for the highest number of scripted TV series.

But there was also a sense of concern among the executives, producers and agents in attendance at Monday night’s Emmy Awards that 2022 represents the peak of the so-called Peak TV era, which has produced the highest number of scripted TV series , almost every year for more than a decade.

Netflix, which lost subscribers this year for the first time in a decade, has laid off hundreds of workers and is reining in spending. HBO’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, has shelved projects and is laying off a significant number of employees. NBC executives are considering ending its prime-time lineup at 22.00 and hand over the hour to local stations.

Business challenges aside, the night was mostly a feel-good party. Zendaya won her second Emmy, taking best actress in a drama for her role as a troubled teenager in HBO’s Euphoria. Jean Smart repeated as best actress in a comedy for her role as a Joan Rivers-like comedian in HBO Max’s Hacks.

Play octopus, the blood-soaked South Korean Netflix series, won a pair of awards: Lee Jung-jae for Best Actor in a Drama and Hwang Dong-hyuk for Direction. These wins represented a major breakthrough for a foreign-language show as television becomes more global and as American audiences are increasingly receptive to subtitled series.

Michael Keaton, who played a small-town doctor in Addicted, took home the award for Best Actor in a Limited Series. And Amanda Seyfried won Best Actress in a Limited Series for her well-received performance as Elizabeth Holmes in Abandoned.

Emmy voters often have a habit of finding a winner and sticking with it, and this year was no different. John Oliver’s Last week tonight won the Best Talk Show category for the seventh consecutive year, and Saturday Night Live took Best Black Sketch Series for the sixth year in a row.

This year’s ceremony was the first return to the Microsoft Theater since the pandemic. Emmys producers incorporated an element it experimented with at last year’s ceremony, which took place inside a tent: Instead of theater-style seating, the nominees were gathered around tables with bottles of champagne and wine around them.

This year’s host, Kenan Thompson, the Saturday Night Live veteran, opened the ceremony with a top hat and led a group of dancers in a bizarre interpretive dance to theme songs from famous TV series such as Law & Order, The Brady Bunch and Game of Thrones.

During his monologue, Thompson examined Netflix’s recent troubles.

“If you don’t know what Play octopus is, this is the competition you enter when you’re in massive debt and desperate for money,” the host said. “Are you joining the cast next season? Netflix.”

More images

Reuters and AP