LOS ANGELES: Kendrick Lamar and Barack Obama each won their second career Emmys on Sunday night, while the 50th season of “Saturday Night Live” was the biggest winner with 11 on the second night of the Creative Arts Emmy Awards.
Lamar and Tony Russell won for the music direction of his Super Bowl halftime show. He won his first Emmy in 2022 as a performer at the Super Bowl halftime headlined by Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg.
Obama won a star-studded documentary narrator category that also included Tom Hanks, Idris Elba and David Attenborough. He won the same award in 2022.
Neither Lamar nor Obama was at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles to accept his Emmy. Neither were expected to be, at a show that despite several high-profile winners including Jimmy Kimmel, Conan O’Brien and Alan Cumming is primarily devoted to behind-the-scenes crew members a week before TV’s stars take the same stage for the bigger Emmys ceremony.
Presenter Jordan Klepper laughed along with the crowd as he said, “Apparently, Barack Obama couldn’t be here tonight” after announcing the winner.
“SNL 50: The Anniversary Special,” the pinnacle of a season-long celebration for the NBC sketch institution, won seven Emmys, including awards for its directing, writing, hairstyling and editing. A pop-up immersive experience tied to the special won an Emmy for emerging media and regular episodes of the show won three more.
HBO’s “Pee-wee as Himself” won four awards including best documentary, posthumously giving its star and subject Paul Reubens, who died in 2023, his first Emmy.
O’Brien won two Emmys for his travel series, “Conan O’Brien Must Go,” taking his career total to six. And while he didn’t get one personally for the show, Netflix’s “Conan O’Brien: The Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize For American Humor” beat out football halftime shows from Lamar and Beyoncé to win best variety special.
Beyoncé did win a previously announced special Emmy for the costumes on her Christmas Day “Beyoncé Bowl” on Netflix.
Kimmel, who has hosted both the Oscars and the Emmys multiple times, was here to accept his fourth Emmy, for best host of a game show for his work on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.”
He thanked the show’s late original host Regis Philbin for making “Millionaire” a cultural phenomenon.
“Regis was the best at this,” Kimmel said backstage. “It is exciting to have this and to know that he has this same Emmy in his family’s collection somewhere.”
“Jeopardy” won best game show, while Cumming won best host of a reality show for “The Traitors.”
The two-night Creative Arts Emmys hands out nearly 100 awards in hyper-specific categories that can bring oddities. Like the Grammys and Oscars winning Emmys, as each did Sunday.
The CBS Grammys telecast won for its choreography, while ABC’s Oscars telecast — also hosted by O’Brien — won for its production design.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting was honored with the Television Academy’s Governors Award even as it winds down its nearly 60-year work after the US government withdrew funding from the institution that has helped pay for PBS, NPR, 1,500 local radio and TV stations
The award goes to a person or entity “made a profound, transformational and long-lasting contribution to the arts and/or science of television.”
“Even an act of Congress can not erase an indelible legacy,” Henry Louis Gates Jr., host of “Finding Your Roots” on PBS, said during the presentation.
“Queer Eye” won best structured reality show, while “Love on the Spectrum” won best unstructured reality show.
The Creative Arts show runs quickly and efficiently — 47 awards are handed out on Sunday aloe in about 2 1/2 hours — but the atmosphere is loose. Swearing is allowed because of the lack of TV, as Kimmel showed when he told nominee Will Ferrell to shut up during his speech.
“This is the Emmys for the people that the people who run the Emmys don’t think should be seen on network TV,” presenter Sarah Silverman said when she opened the show as a presenter.
The two nights are edited down into one show that will air on TV on FXX on Saturday. The following day, the 77th Primetime Emmy Awards, hosted by Nate Bargatze, will air live on CBS.
While Sunday honored variety, documentary and reality TV, scripted series had the stage on Saturday.
“The Studio” won nine early Emmys including best guest actor in a comedy for Bryan Cranston, making it the front-runner to end up with the biggest total after next Sunday’s main show.
“Severance” was tops among dramas with six awards, including best guest actress in a drama for Merritt Wever.
“The Penguin” pulled in eight in the limited series categories, and Julie Andrews won her third Emmy at age 89 for her voice-over work on “Bridgerton.”
‘SNL’ wins big for season 50 at the Creative Arts Emmys. Obama, Kimmel and Lamar also take trophies
https://arab.news/cupez
‘SNL’ wins big for season 50 at the Creative Arts Emmys. Obama, Kimmel and Lamar also take trophies
- Lamar won for music direction of his Super Bowl halftime show, while Obama won for documentary narration
- Neither attended the event. “Saturday Night Live” was the night’s biggest winner with 11 awards for its 50th season
As Iran conflict spills over, Iraq’s Kurds say ‘this war is not mine’
- The Kurds, an ethnic minority with a distinct culture and language, are rooted in the mountainous region spread across Turkiye, Syria, Iraq and Iran
- American bases there have come under fire, as have positions held by Iranian Kurdish parties — the same ones US President Donald Trump said it would be “wonderful” to see storm Iran
SORAN, Iraq: On a deserted road not too far from the border between Iran and Iraqi Kurdistan, Satar Barsirini looked up at the sky, now streaked with jets and drones.
Iraq’s Kurdish region has found itself caught in the crossfire of a regional war triggered by US and Israeli attacks on the Islamic republic.
Dressed like the Kurdish fighters he once served alongside, Barsirini still wears the khaki shalwar, fitted jacket and scarf wrapped around his waist.
Though recently retired, he refuses to give up his peshmerga uniform as he tills his small plot of land.
The rumble of jets and hum of drones “come from everywhere. Especially at night,” he told AFP in the hamlet of Barsirini, dozens of kilometers from the border.
He described the “shiver in our flesh” as the drones hit the ground outside.
“I feel bad for the people, because we have paid a lot in blood to liberate Kurdistan... We just want to live.”
Irbil, the autonomous region’s capital, and the valleys leading to the border have been targeted by Tehran and the Iraqi armed groups it supports.
American bases there have come under fire, as have positions held by Iranian Kurdish parties — the same ones US President Donald Trump said it would be “wonderful” to see storm Iran.
But Iran warned on Friday it would target facilities in Iraqi Kurdistan if fighters crossed into its territory.
“This isn’t my war,” said 58-year-old Barsirini.
He recalled the brutal repression and flight into the snowy mountains after the 1991 Kurdish uprising that followed the first Gulf War.
- ‘Dangerous people’ -
The uprising was repressed, leading to an exodus of two million Kurds to Iran and Turkiye.
“When we fled the cities for our lives, we went to Iran. They helped us, they gave us shelter and food,” he said.
The Kurds would not forget that, Barsirini stressed, adding that they could not just “turn against them” now to support the US and Israel.
“I don’t trust (Americans). They are dangerous people,” he said.
The Kurds, an ethnic minority with a distinct culture and language, are rooted in the mountainous region spread across Turkiye, Syria, Iraq and Iran.
They have long fought for their own homeland, but for decades suffered defeats on the battlefield and massacres in their hometowns.
They make up one of Iran’s most important non-Persian ethnic minority groups.
A week of war has gripped daily life in Iraqi Kurdistan, residents told AFP.
“People are afraid,” said Nasr Al-Din, a 42-year-old policeman who, as a child, lived through the 1991 exodus — “thrown on a donkey’s back with my sister.”
“This generation is different from the older ones” that have seen “seen fighting.”
Now, he said, you could be “sitting down in your home... and all of a sudden a drone hits your house.”
“We may have to go into town or somewhere safer,” said Issa Diayri, 31, a truck driver waiting in a roadside garage, his lorry idle for lack of deliveries from Iran.
- ‘Shouldn’t get involved’ -
Soran, a small town of 3,000 people about 65 kilometers (40 miles) from the border, was hit Thursday by a drone that fell in the middle of a street.
There, baker Yussef Ramazan, 42, and his three apprentices, hurriedly made bread before breaking their fast.
But, living so close to the Iranian border, he said “people are afraid to come and buy it.”
He told AFP he did not think it was a good idea “for the Kurdish region to get involved in this war.”
“We are not even an independent country yet. We would like to become one, but we are nothing for now, so we shouldn’t get involved in these situations.”
Across the street, Hajji watched from his empty dry cleaning shop as the road cleared.
Before the war, the town was crowded as evening fell, he said, declining to give his full name.
“But after the drone explosion, no one was here. In five minutes, everyone left the street and no one was out.”
