LOS ANGLES Audiences for Sunday’s Emmy Awards show appeared to be slightly down from last year’s record low, according to early TV ratings data on Monday. Aziz Ansari and Allan Yang, the writers of “Master of None”, were inspired to tell the story of two first-generation Americans trying to understand what their parents went through as immigrants. The show won five trophies including Outstanding Limited Series plus acting gongs for Sarah Paulson, Sterling K. Brown and Courtney B. Vance.
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The top comedy was once again Veep – with its star Julia Louis-Dreyfus taking home her fifth consecutive “Best Actress” gold.
After the widespread backlash received by the 2016 Academy Awards, prompting numerous biggest names in entertainment to boycott the show and the creation of the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite, all eyes were on this year’s Emmy awards to see just how much diversity would be reflected in not only the attendees, but in the winners honored for their contributions. She added, “What started out as a political satire, now feels more like a sobering documentary” and vowed to rebuild the wall between comedy and politics saying, “and make Mexico pay for it”. The Voice won for a second year in a row, and Jeffrey Tambor also did a two-fur for his lead role on Transparent.
“I just hope there are more opportunities for transgender talent”, Tambor said. “I would not be unhappy were I the last cisgender male to play a transgender female on television”. He said, “There’s 17 million Asian Americans in this country, and there are 17 million Italian Americans – they have “The Godfather, ‘ ‘Goodfellas, ‘ ‘Rocky, ‘ ‘The Sopranos” – we got Long Duk Dong”.
Veteran shows dominated the awards at this year’s Emmys, which were hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, with HBO’s “Game of Thrones” and “Veep” winning best drama and best comedy, respectively, for the second straight year. He reminded everyone that the TV world is more diverse than ever, then noted, “In Hollywood, the only thing we value more than diversity is congratulating ourselves on how much we value diversity”. When Smith won Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for her role in “Downton Abbey”, Kimmel intercepted the award and, since Smith was not in attendance, joked that it would be placed in the lost and found.
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Jimmy Kimmel, this year’s host, spearheaded the opening skit.
