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Emmy night Was a Mixed Bag for Palisadians

The ‘Veep’ cast surrounded Julia Louis-Dreyfus (center) as the TV Academy gave the series a fun send-off – but no Emmys – at Sunday night’s awards show.                     Photo: Fox TV.

By BERNICE FOX

Special to Circling the News

When it came to winning at Sunday’s Emmy Awards, Bill Hader “represented,” as the hipsters say, for Pacific Palisades.

Winning for “Barry,” Hader was the only performer from the Palisades to take home an Emmy. Don Cheadle, Ted Danson and Eugene Levy also had been nominated in the same category: lead actor in a comedy. Cheadle had been up for “Black Monday,” Danson, for “The Good Place” and Levy for “Schitt’s Creek.”

This is the second year Bill Hader has won an Emmy for his portrayal of a hit man studying acting.                       Photo: Fox TV

After his win, Hader told reporters during a question-and-answer session backstage, that he still hadn’t processed winning last year’s Emmy, let alone the one he’d just been awarded.

The evening’s shockeroo was “Veep.” It won nothing. At the very least, Julia Louis-Dreyfus was expected by many to win another Emmy as lead actress in a comedy series. Sentiment supposedly was with her and the show – both in top form, according to many critics, since returning for a seventh and final season after she was treated for breast cancer.

It’s the relatively new series, “Fleabag,” that took the Emmys for outstanding comedy series and lead actress in a comedy, Phoebe Waller-Bridge. “Fleabag” also impacted Bill Hader and “Barry” since this British series also won for comedy directing, which Hader was up for.

So Louis-Dreyfus will have to be content gazing at the eight Emmys she’s previously won for acting – a record she shares with Cloris Leachman. Six of those Emmys are for acting on “Veep.” Those wins are a record for winning on the same show.

The cast of “Veep” did get a standing ovation earlier in the Emmy show. Hugh Laurie, who had a guest role on “Veep’s” final season, welcomed the stars onto the stage, saying he was “delivering this requiem” for the series, which for seven years “was just about the funniest thing anywhere.”

Building on that, Laurie said “Veep” had “probably the greatest cast ever assembled in peacetime, and all of this brilliance supporting the single greatest comedy performance” he’d ever seen: Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

Without any gushing, a similar spotlight was focused on another beloved series that just ended: “Game of Thrones.”  And as many expected, when the evening was done, it had won outstanding drama series for the fourth time.

Remember that huge hot-pink toilet plunger that was placed next to the local Amazon Books several weeks ago? It was to remind members of the Television Academy to consider “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” for various Emmys. It apparently had the desired effect because the series won both supporting acting categories for comedy.

Alex Borstein won an Emmy as best supporting actress in a comedy. Photo: Fox TV

Alex Borstein won her second Emmy for “Maisel.” As she gave an impassioned thank-you speech about how her grandmother evaded certain death in a concentration camp, a huge photo of a scene from the series was projected onto a wall on the stage. It showed Borstein’s character with a plunger.

In his thank-you speech, Tony Shalhoub said he didn’t want to thank a long list of names. But he explained “it takes a village” to make the show. Of course, the out-sized pink plunger had been in Caruso’s Palisades Village.

And as the Emmys do each year, there was a segment to remember those in the industry who passed away since the last Emmy show. Halsey sang the Cyndi Lauper song, “Time After Time,” as In Memoriam photos were projected above the stage. One of those images was of Palisadian Peter Fonda, who died in mid-August from complications of lung cancer.

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