Creative Arts Emmys: The Winners

HBO’s Boardwalk Empire led the charge at Saturday’s Creative Arts Emmys Awards in Los Angeles with seven awards, including best casting, sound editing, art direction and nonprosthetic single camera makeup.

Focused on tech categories but also including guest actors and reality hosts, Creative Arts is where a vast majority of Emmys are awarded. For example, of the 104 noms this year for HBO, 75 are in categories that will be awarded during the Creative Arts telecast; only 29 are on Fox’s more-watched Primetime Emmy telecast. The ceremony was held at the Nokia Theater L.A. Live in downtown L.A, and will air September 17th at 8 p.m. ET on REELZCHANNEL.

HBO earned a total 15 awards, followed by PBS with 10 and Fox with 9.

Discovery Channel’s Deadliest Catch and History’s Gettysburg netted four wins each. Deadliest Catch won outstanding reality program as well as editing, cinematography and sound mixing honors. Gettysburg, a reenactment doc executive produced by Ridley and Tony Scott, took outstanding nonfiction special honors and wins for costumes, visual effects and sound editing.

Jeff Probst was named outstanding reality-competition host despite the fact that Survivor wasn’t nominated in the reality competition category.

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The evening’s first upset came early on when Loretta Devine took the guest actress in a drama series trophy for Grey’s Anatomy over Dexter‘s Julia Stiles. Another favorite, Raising Hope‘s Cloris Leachman, was overlooked in the outstanding comedy guest actress category in favor of Gwyneth Paltrow, who played substitute teacher Holly Holliday on only three Glee episodes versus Leachman, who appeared on the entire season of Hope.

Another shocker occured in the guest actor in a drama category as Paul McCrane of Harry’s Law took the win over frontrunner Jeremy Davies of Justified.

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Matt Groening’s Futurama, revived on Comedy Central years after being cut loose from Fox (though still a Twentieth Century Fox Television co-production), triumphed as outstanding animated program. Voice actor Maurice Lamarche was also singled out for outstanding voiceover performace for the program.

TV Land’s Hot in Cleveland, which earned its first nom this year, landed the prize for outstanding multicamera series. HBO‘s Mildred Pierce took the prize for best miniseries or movie, casting, and a music win for Carter Burwell.

Comedy casting honors went to Fox’s Glee, while AMC’s The Walking Dead scored the Emmy for best prosthetic makeup. Saturday Night Live and The Kennedys also received make-up nods for multi camera series or special, and nonprosthetic makeup for a miniseries, respectively.

Period pieces triumphed in costume categories with best series wins for Showtime’s The Borgias, a miniseries nod for PBS’s Downton Abbey, and Gettysburg and Portlandia, which shared the honor in the variety music or special category.

HBO’s Game of Thrones was crowned king of main title design for its sphere intro created by Elastic. The Borgias took main title theme music honors.

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The evening’s other winners included Cinema Verite, Pillars of the Earth, Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations and Southland, So You Think You Can Dance and Freedom Riders.

Josh Meyers, Paul Reubens, Jon Cryer, and Two and a Half Men showrunner Chuck Lorre were among the evening’s presenters. Cryer and Lorre’s presentation, which took place the same night Charlie Sheen‘s Comedy Central roast was being taped, was somewhat anti-climatic with stilted dialogue — Lorre: “Any amusing anecdotes? Cryer: “Nothing amusing.” Lorre: I am drawing a blank too.”