HBO led the way at the 2013 Creative Arts Emmy Awards with 20 awards, including eight for Behind the Candelabra, a biopic about the flamboyant piano virtuoso Liberace. CBS was second with 15 honors.
The ceremony was held at NOKIA Theatre L.A. LIVE in downtown Los Angeles. An edited version of the event will air as a special on Saturday, September 22, at 9:00 PM ET/PT, with an encore airing at 12:00 AM ET/PT, on FXX.
The Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards, traditionally held the weekend before the live Primetime Emmys telecast, are largely dedicated to key technical disciplines and behind-the-scenes crafts essential to television production: art direction, cinematography, hairstyling, makeup, music, picture editing, sound editing and mixing, special visual effects, stunts and more.
In addition, awards are given for animation, commercials, nonfiction series, reality series and other programming, as well as four acting categories.
Outstanding guest actress in a comedy series went to Melissa Leo for FX’s Louie; outstanding guest actress in a drama series went to Carrie Preston for CBS’s The Good Wife; outstanding guest actor in a drama series went to Dan Bucatinsky for ABC’s Scandal; and outstanding guest actor in a comedy series went to Bob Newhart for CBS’s The Big Bang Theory. Tim Gunn and Heidi Klum were named outstanding reality hosts for Project Runway.
Newhart's victory marked the first Primetime Emmy of his half-century career — he has had a total of seven nominations, the first of which came in 1962.
Awards were presented in 77 categories by members of the cast and creative teams from more than a 20 series and specials.
In order of appearance, they were:
Joel McHale & Dan Harmon (Community), Chris Parnell (Archer), Rupert Friend (Homeland), Nolan Gould (Modern Family), Heidi Klum, Tim Gunn & Jonathan Murray (Project Runway), Linda Cardellini & Matthew Weiner (Mad Men), Rickey Minor (The Grammys & The Tonight Show with Jay Leno), McKenzie Westmore (Face Off), Joelle Carter & Graham Yost (Justified), Robert Smigel & Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog (Conan), Scott Bakula & Jerry Weintraub (Behind the Candelabra), Yeardley Smith (The Simpsons), Katharine McPhee (Smash), Margo Martindale (The Millers), Mark Burnett & Roma Downey (The Bible), Jamie Hyneman & Adam Savage (MythBusters), Mark Cuban, Daymond John, Kevin O'Leary, Lori Greiner & Robert Herjavec (Shark Tank), Cobie Smulders & Pamela Fryman (How I Met Your Mother), Gilbert Gottfried and Neil Patrick Harris (65th Emmy Awards host and star of How I Met Your Mother).
The show also featured an In Memoriam montage that included dozens of casting directors, picture editors, art directors and professionals in many other crafts who died over the past year. The segment culminated with a tribute to Ray Dolby, who passed away just days before the ceremony. Dolby, an audio engineer educated at Stanford and Cambridge universities, invented processes in the field of sound that revolutionized music, television and film.
The Governors Award, which is bestowed annually to individuals or organizations committed to important social causes, or who have achieved a formidable body of work, went to June Foray, a performer who has been called “The First Lady of Cartoon Voices.”
Legendary animation director Chuck Jones once said, “June Foray is not the female Mel Blanc. Mel Blanc is the male June Foray.” A fixture in animation for over sixty years, Foray has created numerous indelible characters, including Rocky the Flying Squirrel and Natasha Fatale on The Bullwinkle Show, Nell Fenwick on The Dudley Do-Right Show, Cindy Lou Who in How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Granny, the owner of Tweety and Sylvester on The Bugs Bunny Show and Jokey Smurf on The Smurfs.
Accepting her award, Foray, who will turn 96 on September 18, paid tribute to a group of animation icons who gave her opportunities along the way, including Chuck Jones, Walt Disney, Tex Avery, Walter Lantz and Jay Ward.
Later, speaking to reporters, she added, “This is very flattering to me because I’ve been working since I was 12 years old. It’s like my star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.”
History was made with the evening's first award, when the Netflix series House of Cards won the award for oustanding casting for a drama, making it the first win in a major Primetime Creative Arts category for nonlinear programming. Later in the evening House of Cards won again, this time for outstanding cinematography for a single-camera series.
Netflix had received two Engineering Emmy Awards in the past, but its series honors were a milestone in the year the company scored 14 total nominations — nine for House of Cards, three for the comedy Arrested Development and two for the horror series Hemlock Grove.
Behind the Candelabra, which stars Michael Douglas as Liberace and Matt Damon as his chauffeur and romantic partner Scott Thorson, prevailed in casting, art direction, picture editing, hairstyling, sound mixing, non-prosthetic makeup, prosthetic makeup, costumes and cinematography.
The 66th Annual Tony Awards telecast was named Outstanding Special Class Program — marking four years in a row for the awards ceremony devoted to the Broadway stage.
The Tonys also won for technical direction, camerawork and video control, music direction, and for original music and lyrics for the song "If I Had Time" — marking two years in a row in the category.
Another awards show, the 55th Annual Grammy Awards, took two Emmys — for sound mixing for a variety series or special and costumes for a varietyprogram or special.
Also taking home multiple Emmys was the HBO drama Boardwalk Empire, which won four — for art direction for a single-camera series, hairstyling for a single-camera series, sound mixing for a comedy or drama series (one-hour) and sound editng for a series.
Yet another multiple winner, the Starz series Da Vinci's Demons, won for outstanding main title theme music and main title design.
Among the other programming winners, CBS's Undercover Boss took outstanding reality program for the second consecutive year and Cartoon Network's Children’s Hospital won outstanding special class short-format live-action program for the second time in a row.
Outstanding animated program went to Comedy Central's long-running South Park.
Outstanding short-form animated program went to Disney.com for Disney Mickey Mouse Croissant de Triomphe.
Nickelodeon's Nick News with Linda Ellerbee — Forgotten But Not Gone: Kids, HIV & AIDS won for outstanding children’s program, marking the ninth Primetime Emmy for the acclaiemd program.
The winner for outstanding commercial was “Inspired,” a spot for Canon. The production company was MJZ, and the advertising agency was Grey.
Outstanding documentary or nonfiction series went to PBS for American Masters and outstanding informational series or special was won by the Bravo mainstay Inside the Actors Studio.
Exceptional merit in documentary filmmaking went to the HBO production Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, about the efforts of a group of men to expose a pedophile priest who ran a school for deaf children and preyed on them for many years. The doc also won awards for picture editing for nonfiction programming and writing for nonfiction programming.
In the ceremony's other writing category, Louis C.K. took the award for writing a variety special for the HBO special Louis C.K.: Oh My God.
Lily Tomlin's win for oustanding voice-over performance, which she received for the HBO documentary An Apology to Elephants, was the sixth of her career.
Speaking with the press, Tomlin thanked HBO as well as the late Pat Derby and her husband, Ed Stewart, co-founders of PAWS — the Performing Animal Welfare Society — for providing sanctuary to the pachyderms. "It's time to free the elephants!," she shouted.
Rounding out the night’s winners after HBO’s 20 Emmys and CBS’s 15 were NBC with eight; Cartoon Network, Disney.com, Nickelodeon, PBS and Showtime, with three; CNN, Comedy Central, Discovery Channel, Fox, FX, History, Netflix and Starz with two each; and ABC, AMC, Bravo, BravoTV.com, Cinemax, ComedyCentral.com, Disney XD, History.com, IFC, Lifetime, Oprah.Com/LifeClass, ReelzChannel, Sundance Channel and YouTube.com/LizzieBennet with one each.
This year’s executive producers were Eileen Horta, chair of the Creative Arts Emmy Awards Committee, vice chair Mark Watters, Frank Scherma, Lee Miller and Kieran Healy. The producer — for the 19th time — was Spike Jones, Jr. Chris Donovan directed the show.
The balance of this year's Emmys will be handed out at the Primetime Emmy Awards telecast. Hosted by Neil Patrick Harris, the show will air live coast-to-coast on CBS on Sunday, September 22, from NOKIA Theatre L.A. LIVE in downtown Los Angeles. The executive producer is Ken Ehrlich.
Get the full list of 2013 Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards winner here.
