THERE WERE two Irish winners at the primetime Emmys, television’s answer to the Oscars, in Los Angeles on Sunday night.
Brendan Gleeson, the veteran Dublin performer, carried off the award for best lead actor in a mini-series for his performance as Winston Churchill in Into The Storm.
Earlier in the evening, Dearbhla Walsh picked up the Emmy for outstanding directing on a mini-series for her work on the BBC’s breathless adaption of Charles Dickens’s Little Dorrit.
News of the awards saw congratulations from Martin Cullen, Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism: “It is wonderful to see these gifted artists recognised and acknowledged in this way, and to see both Irish acting and directing talent once again taking centre stage at a high-profile industry event.”
Simon Perry, chief executive of the Irish Film Board, said: “It’s great to see, amid the gloom of such a recession, that the flames of Irish talent burns as brightly as ever.”
Brendan Gleeson, now one of the most sought-after character actors in Hollywood, delivered a moving speech in which he thanked the producers for arranging an early screening of Into the Storm for his mother shortly before she died.
Acknowledging the other distinguished actors in his category – Ian McKellen and Kenneth Branagh were also nominated – he commented: “Now there’s a turn-up for the books.”
Into the Storm, directed by Thaddeus O’Sullivan and coproduced by HBO and the BBC, follows on from 2002’s The Gathering Storm to tell the story of Winston Churchill’s experiences during the second World War.
There were few other surprises among the remaining awards. 30 Rock, the series focussing on backstage antics at an American sketch show, won best comedy for the second consecutive year, and Mad Men, the cult show depicting smoking and boozing in a 1960s advertising agency, retained the trophy for best drama.
With seven awards, Little Dorrit had the biggest haul. Grey Gardens, a TV movie following the later life of Jackie Onassis’s eccentric cousins, came in second place with six Emmys.
30 Rock, though nominated for a staggering 22 awards, only managed to convert four of those nods into wins. Glenn Close won the drama actress prize for Damages. Bryan Cranston won best drama actor for his role as a terminally-ill chemistry teacher in the eye- wateringly dark Breaking Bad.
Acknowledging the shows that people are actually watching (rather than those that are being written about in the New York Times), the Emmys also grudgingly handed out gongs for reality television. The big winners in that often reviled genre were The Amazing Race, which won for reality competition programme, and Survivor, for which Jeff Probst nabbed the reality host award.
The show featured innumerable running jokes referencing rapper Kanye West’s recent bizarre stage invasion at the MTV Video Music Awards and at least one mention of Congressmen Joe Wilson’s heckling of President Obama.
Ken Howard, accepting an Emmy for his role in Grey Gardens, remarked: “I’ll make my speech as brief as possible in the hope it won’t be interrupted by a congressman or a rapper.”
Achieving victory with Churchill: page 16
