Emmy Awards Night Highlights, Winners, Moments: 'Game of Thrones,' 'People v. OJ' Win Big; Tatiana Maslany, Rami Malek Take Home First Emmys
The 2016 Emmy Awards was a huge victory for all television geeks. The awards night was riddled with upsets and first-time winners, from Tatiana Maslany to Rami Malek. Sure, there were predictable wins, lime David Benioff and D.B. Weiss' "Game of Thrones," bringing home the Emmy Primetime Award for Best Drama Series, but the list of winners was exceptionally game-changing this year: more diverse winners and more challenging genre s and shows like "Veep" and "People v. OJ" beating out the more popular ones.
Highlights of the Emmy Awards: Jimmy Kimmel's hosting
This year's Emmy host Jimmy Kimmel sustained his funny throughout the night, starting with a reel of his desperate attempts to hitch a ride to the Emmys to his no-holds-barred punches at Donald Trump and Marcia Clark. He also hit the show's efforts at diversity, saying the only thing Hollywood people value more than diversity "is congratulating ourselves on how much [they] value diversity."
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Kimmel also jokingly blamed "The Apprentice" producer Mark Burnett for Trump's rise to power, threatening him that he'll be the first over the wall Trump will build should he win. Oh, and he got the cutiepie kids from Netflix's sleeper hit "Stranger Things" to give out peanut butter and jelly sandwiches! It got extra fun when Jimmy Kimmel lost an Emmy "Last Night With John Oliver," prompting onscreen archnemesis Matt Damon to appear and tease him about it.
Surprising upsets of the Emmy Awards 2016
What really marked this year's Emmys, however, were the slew of first-time but extremely well-deserved awardees. Tatiana Maslany won Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for her six-woman role in BBC America's "Orphan Black," while Rami Malek won the counterpart award for his role as Elliot Anderson in USA's hacker series "Mr. Robot." Malek even played up his character when he received his award, saying "Please tell me you're seeing this too."
Sterling K. Brown also won for his supporting role in "People vs. OJ." Aziz Ansari, on the other hand, took home Best Comedy Series Writing for his Netflix show, "Master of None." Kate McKinnon won Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series, the first Emmy win for a "Saturday Night Live" cast member.
Predictable wins
The night wouldn't be complete without the usual Emmy suspects, however. HBO's Game of Thrones, for one, won the highly coveted Best Drama Series, while "People v. OJ" also triggered a slight sweep, with Best Lead Actress in a Limited Series (Sarah Paulson, "Marcia Clarke"), Sterling K. Brown and Outstanding Lead Actor (Courtney Vance, "Johnny Cochran"). All in all, HBO took home the most awards tonight with 11 Emmys.
