Emmys 2018: nominations, winners, and highlights

Late in the Emmys telecast, during the portion of the show that often tends to drag, a hero stepped forward to make us all sit up and take notice for a moment. While accepting his Emmy for Outstanding Directing for a Variety Special, Glenn Weiss took the moment to address his girlfriend, Jan Svendsen.

He began by talking about his mother, who died just two weeks before the ceremony. But she would want him to focus on the sunshine in his life, Weiss said, and so he turned to his own “sunshine,” Svendsen.

The Emmys are traditionally a bit of a snoozefest, fashion-wise. Most of TV’s biggest stars tend to want to play it safe on the red carpet, so they generally wear conservative pretty gowns and look pretty in an unremarkable way.

But every year, there are a few brave souls who dare to risk the ire of fashion bloggers across the web and wear something that’s not quite so safe. This is a space to salute those heroes of the red carpet. For the 2018 Emmy Awards, here are the fashion moments worth talking about.

After a lively opening number (featuring fellow NBC comedic stable members Kate McKinnon and Kenan Thompson) that only served to drive home what a strange choice they are as Emmy hosts, Michael Che and Colin Jost kicked things off with a comparatively stiff monologue that mostly scored lukewarm laughs.

Though their jokes tackled the expected timely topics — sexual harassment, Roseanne, representation — they were delivered with an offhand lightness that robbed them of their deserved weight, and thus dulled their comedic impact. Jost noted that the audience members were allowed to drink in their seats, joking about “losing inhibitions at a work function” before launching into quips about getting calls from Ronan Farrow (who wrote on the Harvey Weinstein allegations for the New Yorker as well as reporting on misconduct allegations against Les Moonves).

The Emmys kicked off Monday night with a tongue-in-cheek nod to diversity in Hollywood by an ensemble of nominees performing a jaunty musical number. Its title? “We Solved It.” (Spoiler alert: They didn’t solve it.)

Saturday Night Live’s Kate McKinnon and Kenan Thompson led a host of fellow actors including Sterling K. Brown, Tituss Burgess, and Kristen Bell in the show’s opening skit, which saw the group celebrating having “solved” the entertainment industry’s ongoing efforts to diversify. The number contained a wide range of pop culture references, from Roseanne Barr’s downfall to the #MeToo movement to Cynthia Nixon’s failed New York gubernatorial primary run.

On Monday, the 70th annual Primetime Emmy Awards honored the past year’s greatest achievements in television. The night crowned a new comedy queen and reminded us that the show with the dragons is still pretty good.

Headed into the ceremony, one big question was which show would replace Veep as the winner of the Outstanding Comedy Series trophy. Veep, which has won the award since 2015, was not eligible this year as its production was delayed while star Julia Louis-Dreyfus underwent treatment for breast cancer.

The 2018 Emmys were at once enthralling and utterly anticlimactic.

You could feel it in the way FX’s The Americans won for writing and lead actor (Matthew Rhys), while Netflix’s The Crown won for directing and lead actress (Claire Foy) ... only for both to founder on the rocks of boring ol’ Game of Thrones winning its third Emmy for drama series.

Out of several memorable looks from the 2018 Primetime Emmy Awards, two of the standouts came from Saturday Night Live players Leslie Jones, in a hypnotizing iridescent suit by Christian Siriano, and Aidy Bryant, who wore a whimsical Tanya Taylor dress dotted with 3,500 yellow and pink sequins. The praise on Twitter was immediate and resoundingly enthusiastic.

It’s not at all surprising that Jones and Bryant chose to work with Siriano and Taylor, respectively, on custom Emmys looks. Like fellow actresses Melissa McCarthy and Christina Hendricks, both women have both been vocal about the fact that designers are reluctant or flat-out unwilling to work with celebrities who don’t fit into sample-size clothing — that is, generally, a size 0 to 4. In navigating that reality, Jones and Bryant have formed ongoing relationships with two designers who have extended their sizing in recent years.

On an Emmys red carpet filled with designer gowns and dashing tuxedos, Broadway and Black-ish star Jennifer Lewis opted to wear Nike.

“I am wearing Nike to applaud them for supporting Colin Kaepernick and his protest against racial injustice and police brutality,” Lewis told Variety during her red-carpet interview before the ceremony. She described her thought process in coming up with the idea to wear Nike as asking herself, “What can I do? What can I do that’s meaningful? I’ll wear Nike. I’ll wear Nike to say thank you. Thank you for leading the resistance! We need more corporate America to stand up also.”

At the Emmys this year, Tiffany Haddish continued her trend of paying sartorial homage to her Eritrean heritage on the red carpet, wearing a playful Prabal Gurung gown that has lots of people on Twitter remembering their playground days.

Haddish’s rainbow-striped gown is gathering comparisons to everything from Rainbow Brite...

Michael Che and Colin Jost seem to have mixed feelings about hosting the 70th Primetime Emmy Awards: In an interview with the LA Times last month, the duo came off as ambivalent about the gig, with Che implying that he hadn’t really liked an awards show since childhood and Jost describing awards shows as “way too self-serious and focused on things that 99 percent of the country doesn’t care about.”

In fairness, the reaction to the news of Che and Jost hosting the Emmys has also been mixed, though for decidedly different reasons.

The 70th annual Primetime Emmy Awards will be handed out on Monday September 17. The ceremony is broadcasting live from the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles and hosted by Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update anchors, Michael Che and Colin Jost.

The Emmys focus on honoring television, and the 2018 nominees include many previous winners, including Game of Thrones and The Handmaid’s Tale. Both of those shows have been named Outstanding Drama Series in the past — with Game of Thrones’ sixth season winning in 2016 and The Handmaid’s Tale’s freshman season winning in 2017, when Game of Thrones was not eligible to compete. This year, they’ll compete against one another for a repeat victory, alongside Westworld, The Crown, The Americans, Stranger Things, and This Is Us.

At last year’s Emmy Awards, there was a fair degree of uncertainty around the night’s three biggest categories. Outstanding Drama Series looked like a fight between Stranger Things and The Handmaid’s Tale (the latter won). Outstanding Comedy Series looked like a fight between returning champion Veep and either Atlanta or Black-ish. (Veep prevailed.) And Outstanding Limited Series was a battle between Big Little Lies, Feud, and The Night Of. (Big Little Lies won.)

Meanwhile, many of the other categories anointed new winners, handing out first trophies to folks like Donald Glover (for directing and acting on Atlanta) and Elisabeth Moss (for acting and producing on The Handmaid’s Tale). It wasn’t as exciting a night as it might have been — early on, it became clear that Handmaid’s and Big Little Lies were just going to keep winning — but it was a lot more exciting than the typically staid Emmys usually are.

The 2018 Emmy Awards have arrived. The 70th annual Primetime Emmy Awards will air on Monday, September 17, honoring the greatest television achievements of the past year.

The major awards are divided into separate categories for comedy and drama. On the drama side, the 2018 nominations include 20 nods for 2017’s big winner, The Handmaid’s Tale. As a freshman series, the grim, dystopian adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s novel took home several awards, including Outstanding Writing in a Drama Series and Outstanding Drama Series. Additionally, the Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series prize went to series star Elisabeth Moss, who won an Emmy for the first time after seven prior nominations.

Last year’s Emmy Awards seemed to signal positive change in the television industry. Donald Glover became the first Emmy-winning black director for his work on Atlanta, and Lena Waithe became the first black woman to win an Emmy for comedy writing for Master of None, among other milestone wins over the course of the night. Now 2018’s Emmy nominations are breaking barriers as well.

Sandra Oh, nominated for her performance as Eve Polastri in Killing Eve, has become the first Asian woman to be nominated for an Emmy for Lead Actress in a Drama. She has previously been nominated five times as a supporting actress for her work as Cristina Yang on Grey’s Anatomy.