The comedy “Veep” was a big early winner as the 67th Primetime Emmy Awards got underway Sunday night in Los Angeles.
Tony Hale won best supporting actor in a comedy series for his role on the show, about a female vice-president (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) who ascends to the Oval Office. The show also won a writing award.
Earlier, actress Allison Janney won best supporting actress in a comedy for her role in “Mom,” in which she plays the overbearing mother of a young adult daughter played by Anna Faris. It was Janney’s sixth Emmy; she won five times before for “The West Wing.”
The award was presented by Amy Poehler and the ever-provocative Amy Schumer, who quipped, “Let’s not forget what this night is really about — celebrating hilarious women and letting the Internet weigh in on who looks the worst.”
Actor-comedian Andy Samberg is hosting the live show, expected to run til about 11 pm ET on Fox.
The show opened with Samberg in a video that poked fun at TV’s overabundance of buzzed-about shows. After being mocked by friends for not keeping up with popular new series, Samberg locks himself in a bunker and watches nothing but TV for a year until he emerges, hairy and wild-eyed, to annoy everyone around him.
Samberg then did a brief monologue in which he cracked jokes about diversity in Hollywood, Paula Deen on “Dancing With the Stars” and — inevitably — presidential candidate Donald Trump.
“Donald Trump is running for president, to the delight of uncles everywhere,” Samberg said. “And is it just me, or does Bernie Sanders always look like his flight is delayed?”
The Television Academy will hand out awards in 25 categories, culminating with the night’s two biggest prizes: outstanding comedy and drama series. “Game of Thrones,” “American Horror Story: Freak Show,” “House of Cards” and “Transparent” top the list of shows with the most nominations.
For those keeping score, HBO leads all networks with 126 nominations (HBO is a unit of Time Warner, as is CNN). Far behind in second is ABC with 42, followed by CBS and NBC with 41 each.
The Television Academy announced new rules this year that allows all 15,000 academy members, not just smaller groups, to vote for awards — a change some observers believe could benefit shows with large fan bases such as “Game of Thrones.”
