Emmys 2021: the winners, the losers, the speeches – live! | Television & radio

Michaela Coel is here! She just told Queer Eye’s Karamo on the red carpet that she is “overwhelmed with gratitude” for her four nominations tonight. How many can she win?

There are a ton of Emmys to give out (this night will be a thick and fast one as ever with very few breaks for air) and so the Creative Arts Emmys took place earlier this month to downgrade tonight from being a super long nightmare to just like a regular long nightmare. Here are some of the main ones:

Outstanding guest actress in a drama series: Claire Foy as Queen Elizabeth II on The Crown

Outstanding guest actress in a comedy series: Maya Rudolph as Host on Saturday Night Live

Outstanding guest actor in a drama Series: Courtney B Vance as George Freeman on Lovecraft Country

Outstanding guest actor in a comedy series: Dave Chappelle as Host on Saturday Night Live

Outstanding structured reality program: Queer Eye

Outstanding television movie: Dolly Parton’s Christmas on the Square

Outstanding host for a reality or competition program: RuPaul for RuPaul’s Drag Race

Outstanding documentary or nonfiction series: Secrets of the Whales

Back when the nominations were announced, we let Stuart Heritage express an article’s worth of rage, shock and happiness as he wrote about the snubs and surprises of this year. No Small Axe remains a head-scratcher. Here’s a reminder:

There is an understandable amount of excitement/fear/concern/panic over the many awards that Michaela Coel and her much-loved series I May Destroy You is up for and whether she will leave the night empty-handed or not.

The show picking up at least one of its nine nominations seems likely but can it take home one of the bigger awards, for best limited or anthology series or best actress in a limited or anthology series? It’s arguably a harder sub-section than the ongoing series categories, with The Queen’s Gambit, Mare of Easttown and WandaVision all battling it out. We’ll find out soon!

An interesting-adjacent bit of gossip via E!’s mostly hellish red carpet show here: WandaVision star Elizabeth Olsen’s outfit tonight has been designed by her sisters Mary-Kate and Ashley apparently.

Here it is:

The Emmys has become the first awards show to insist that all attendees are vaccinated and has also limited each nominee to just four guests. Each guest also has to show a recent negative Covid test alongside proof of vaccination.

Last week’s Met Gala instituted a similar mandate, which led to some no-shows and some celebrities speak out but according to tonight’s exec producer Ian Stewart, there’s been no sign of a backlash.

“In fact it’s been the opposite,” he said to Deadline. “People are so enthusiastic about attending, particularly since we limited the number of tickets available, they get snatched right way; it’s very much like a Willy Wonka golden ticket.”

He added: “There is an option to come in remotely if you don’t feel comfortable. We haven’t gotten any pushback on that. We have some people who physically can’t be here so we try to include them as nominees but very few, a handful.”

A fun burst here of Oscars glamour with two of the many big screen A-listers who will be in attendance. Michael Douglas is nominated for his role in The Kominsky Method (nope, still haven’t seen it either)

The choice of Cedric the Entertainer to host tonight’s festivities is … a bit of a strange one (less strange perhaps if it was the 2003 Emmys) but it’s at least something new (it’s not James Corden or Jimmy Kimmel).

It’s a CBS Emmys year which means they have picked one of their stable sitcom stars (he’s in The Neighborhood, a show someone must watch, I’m sure) and he spoke to the Hollywood Reporter earlier this week about the difficulty of trying to get it right at an increasingly sensitive time for comedy:

“It’s not bad if you’re the news for a couple of days, but you don’t want to be the guy that ruins the night or someone’s moment. At the same time, you’ve got to be yourself. As comedians, we’re up on a tightrope trying to make sure people are entertained. But, again, we’re living in a hypersensitive society. You don’t know where that line is sometimes. It moves from day to day.”

Let’s wait and see how that works out.

There’s a major achievement tonight for MJ Rodriguez, who is the first ever trans woman to receive a lead actress nomination, for her role in the final season of Pose.

Chitra Ramaswamy interviewed her for the Guardian earlier this week where she spoke about the importance of the Ryan Murphy-ushered show.

“It’s crazy to think that just before Pose none of this was even a thought in anyone’s mind,” she said. “We had never been in these spaces, on those sets, in Hollywood. So it’s amazing, and honey, I’m living for it. But I do wish there was more of it so we didn’t have to constantly be the educators. Some of us just want to be the artists.”

You can read the full interview here:

There’s a special London-based ceremony tonight for The Crown, the most nominated show of the night, since UK citizens are still unable to fly to the US. Other stars from other shows are also expected.

Here are some of the attendees prepping for an especially late night:

Given how uber-competitive so many categories are this year, it would be a fool’s errand to predict what might triumph, right? Wrong if you’re Adrian Horton, who gives it a brave crack here:

After an understandably clumsy 2020 edition, the Emmys are back to (almost) normal and set to provide us with one of the most interesting ceremonies in years. In the last year, we’ve all been watching more TV than ever before and while it’s not exactly notably better than usual, we all have a lot more opinions on what should and shouldn’t be rewarded.

One of the buzziest seasons of The Crown, the birth of Bridgerton, Michaela Coel’s one-of-a-kind drama I May Destroy You, Netflix’s surprise sleeper hit The Queen’s Gambit, the all-consuming charm of Ted Lasso, Marvel’s breakout smash WandaVision, HBO Max’s buzzy thriller The Flight Attendant – to name but a few. It’s going to be a competitive evening.

We’ll be here all night to fill you in on who gets what and what that all means and whether this might be the first regular-ish awards ceremony we’ve seen since Covid and whether people still, ya know, care about these things (ratings for awards shows in the last 18 months have been catastrophic). Stay tuned!