LOS ANGELES — Top Emmy nominees “Shogun” and “The Bear” can up the score early during the two-night Creative Arts Emmy Awards, which honor artistic and technical achievements in television.
Saturday and Sunday’s ceremonies are a precursor to the main Emmy ceremony, hosted by Dan and Eugene Levy, which airs September 15 at 8 PM EST on ABC.
Presenters of the Creative Arts ceremonies – which, like the upcoming larger show, will be held at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles – include Oscar winners and current Emmy nominees Jamie Lee Curtis and Brie Larson.
The creative arts nominees also include names as big as Ryan Gosling and Angela Bassett.
But such nominees don’t show up often, and the nearly 100 trophies awarded Saturday and Sunday during a pair of marathon shows are mostly deep cuts for the lesser-known. Excellent contemporary makeup (non-prosthetic) is a typical category. The evenings offer a moment of glamor – and for the winners, a moment on stage – to hairdressers, stunt performers, sound mixers and casting directors who rarely get either.
Saturday evening’s show is all about reality, variety and talk shows. It’s fitting that the artisans of “Saturday Night Live” will take home a dozen awards.
Game show hosts, who typically appear this evening and count as major stars, and their Emmy category includes the recently retired Pat Sajak of ‘Wheel of Fortune’ along with Ken Jennings for ‘Jeopardy’, Steve Harvey for ‘Celebrity Family Feud’ . ” and Keke Palmer for “Password.”
The best storyteller award always attracts famous figures – last year’s winner was Barack Obama – and this year is no exception, with Bassett, Morgan Freeman, Paul Rudd and Octavia Spencer among the nominees.
Sunday’s show shifts to scripted comedies and dramas.
“Shogun,” the FX series about politics in feudal Japan, leads all nominees this year with 25. Seventeen of those awards will be presented Sunday in craft categories it could easily dominate, including best historical costumes, best prosthetic makeup and the best stunt performance.
“The Bear,” FX’s series about a sleazy culinary gang, leads all nominees in the comedy categories with 23. Fourteen of them will be released Sunday, including nominations for cinematography, hairstyling and the all-star team of guest actors, including Curtis , fellow Oscar winner Olivia Colman, Bob Odenkirk and Jon Bernthal.
Another Oscar winner, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, is also nominated in the Curtis and Colman category – best guest actress in a comedy – for her performance in “Only Murders in the Building.”
Other presenters also nominated include Hannah Waddingham, Jane Lynch and Mark Cuban.
Gosling is nominated in the guest acting category for his work as host of “Saturday Night Live,” as are two of the show’s alumni, Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph. Rudolph has a chance to win four Emmys, three of which will be awarded by Creative Arts.
___
For more coverage of this year’s Emmy Awards and recent television shows, visit: https://apnews.com/hub/television
