The 69th Emmy Awards was a great night for stories about women, starring women, and written by women. The biggest winners of the night, which celebrates excellence in television, were The Handmaid’s Tale (with five awards) and Big Little Lies (also with five awards). Both are female-fronted series tackling wider issues of patriarchal violence in a sexist political climate. Black Mirror: San Junipero and Veep also picked up multiple awards.
The Handmaid’s Tale won the biggest award of the night: Outstanding Drama Series. But it also picked up awards in every category it was nominated. That meant awards for drama writing and direction, while Elisabeth Moss won the Emmy for a lead actress in drama. Ann Dowd won the best supporting role award for the terrifying Aunt Lydia, while Alexis Bledel picked up the award for best guest performance, announced at the Creative Emmy Awards last week.
Big Little Lies won Outstanding Limited Series, with Alexander Skarsgård, Laura Dern and Nicole Kidman all picking up acting awards: Kidman delivered a powerful speech on the importance of representing stories of domestic abuse.
Lena Waithe became the first black woman to win the award for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series for her work on Master of None, thanking her “LGBTQIA family”. Black Mirror won Outstanding TV Movie and a writing award for its love story between two women, “San Junipero”.
It was a night of firsts more generally: Donald Glover became the first black winner of Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series, and Riz Ahmed became the first man of Asian decent, and the first Muslim, to win an acting Emmy.
Firsts aside, Julia Louis-Dreyfus made Emmy history for the most awards won by a single performer for one role, picking up her sixth consecutive award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for Veep. Reed Morano of The Handmaid’s Tale became the first woman to win the award for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series in 22 years, while Sterling K Brown from This Is Us became the first black man to win Outstanding Lead Actor In a Drama in 19 years.
All in all, the winners, be it The Handmaid’s Tale, Big Little Lies, Saturday Night Live, Veep, The Night Of, This is Us, Black Mirror: San Junipero, or Atlanta, were generally original stories that placed diverse voices at the centre, shone a light on societal injustices, or engaged with the current political landscape in the USA head on.
Oh, and if you’re wondering why Game of Thrones and Twin Peaks were snubbed: they weren’t eligible.
The full list of winners can be found here.
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