After a number of pandemic-constrained awards seasons, Monday’s 74th Primetime Emmy Awards shall be large and festive, producers stated.
LOS ANGELES — Emmy Awards host Kenan Thompson and the ceremony’s producers are promising a feel-good occasion — a phrase not relevant to a number of of the highest nominated reveals.
The perfect drama contenders embody the violently dystopian “Squid Sport,” bleak office satire “Severance” and “Succession,” a couple of highly effective and cutthroat household. Even comedy nominee “Ted Lasso,” the defending champ, took a storytelling darkish flip.
However after a number of pandemic-constrained awards seasons, Monday’s 74th Primetime Emmy Awards (airing 8 p.m. EDT on NBC, streaming on Peacock) shall be large and festive, government producers Reginald Hudlin and Ian Stewart stated.
They’re truly taking a web page from final yr’s scaled-down ceremony and its club-style desk seating for nominees.
“They’d a ball. They’d a celebration. They celebrated themselves,” Stewart stated, recalling a remark made by actor Sophia Bush on the night’s finish: “Oh, my God, I truly had enjoyable on the Emmys.”
The tables shall be again and once more reserved for nominees — and their “significants,” Stewart stated — however there shall be some 3,000 different visitors seated historically within the briefly reconfigured 7,000-seat Microsoft Theater in downtown Los Angeles.
“When the nominees are having a good time that interprets on display,” Hudlin stated, citing the “passionate, touching” speeches delivered by winners.
Thompson, the veteran “Saturday Night time Dwell” forged member taking his first flip as Emmys host, stated he desires to benefit from the ceremony and ensure others do.
“This needs to be an evening of appreciating artistry and creativity and eradicating the stress of all of it out. I get it — it sucks to lose, and all people’s selecting outfits and attempting to do the pink carpet factor,” Thompson stated. “However on the similar time, it’s an superior factor to be within the room on Emmys evening, and I don’t need that to get misplaced within the stress.”
He would not anticipate something mirroring the Will Smith-Chris Rock confrontation that forged a shadow over the Oscars earlier this yr, Thompson stated.
Though HBO’s “Succession,” which received the perfect drama collection award in 2020, and “Ted Lasso” from Apple TV+ are thought of the frontrunners for prime collection honors, there’s potential for surprises. Netflix’s “Squid Sport,” a worldwide sensation, can be the primary non-English language drama collection to win an Emmy.
On the comedy aspect, ABC’s acclaimed newcomer “Abbott Elementary” may change into the primary broadcast present to win the perfect comedy award because the community’s “Fashionable Household” in 2014. It is also among the many few contenders this yr, together with “Squid Sport,” to subject a considerable variety of nominees of colour.
On the Emmy inventive arts ceremonies held earlier this month, the mockumentary-style present about educators in an underfunded Philadelphia faculty, received the trophy for excellent comedy collection casting. “Succession” received the drama collection casting award.
“The Crown,” final yr’s large winner, wasn’t within the operating this time as a result of it sat out the Emmys eligibility interval. The dramatized account of Queen Elizabeth’s reign and household life will return for its fifth season in November, as Britain mourns the lack of its longest-serving monarch who died Thursday at age 96.
