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The hazmat tuxedo suit especially designed and created for the 2020 Emmys in Los Angeles.
The hazmat tuxedo suit especially designed and created for the 2020 Emmys in Los Angeles. Photograph: ABC
The hazmat tuxedo suit especially designed and created for the 2020 Emmys in Los Angeles. Photograph: ABC

Hazmat tuxedos and video calls to feature at first all-virtual Emmys

This article is more than 3 years old

HBO’s Watchmen leads way in nominations for 72nd edition of US TV awards

Normally one of the most glamorous Hollywood nights of the year, the first all-virtual Emmy awards are likely to be remembered for hazmat tuxedos and designer pyjamas.

For nominees, there would be the added strangeness of an official outside their home who might, or might not, personally deliver a trophy when the moment came, the actor Brian Cox said.

Jimmy Kimmel will host the 72nd edition of the US television awards on Sunday night, with HBO’s Watchmen leading the charge with 26 nominations.

British actors including Cox, Olivia Colman, Jodie Comer, Thandie Newton, Helena Bonham Carter, Matthew Macfadyen and Harriet Walter are all in with a shout of winning a prize in what is set to be the oddest Emmy show in history.

Producers dreamed up the hazmat tuxedo to ensure “the health and safety of all our winners and the presenter by following all of the health and safety protocols – with a twist”.

Recipients, who will all be in their own homes and appearing via video call, have been asked to “come as you are but make an effort”. A leaked letter sent to nominees suggests: “If you’re in the UK and it’s 3am, perhaps you want to be in designer pajamas [sic] and record from your bed!”

Brian Cox. Photograph: Children’s Hospices Across Scotland/PA

Cox is odds-on with bookmakers to win best actor in a drama for his portrayal of the mercurial billionaire media tycoon Logan Roy, in Succession. He said Emmy producers were planning to send people out to personally deliver trophies to winners in their own homes.

“There’s going to be a man standing outside the door with an Emmy, which I may not win,” he told BBC Breakfast. “Every Emmy nominee – there’ll be a man standing outside their house.”

Cox will be up against Jeremy Strong, who plays the oldest son, Kendall, in Succession, and Jason Bateman for Ozark, Sterling K Brown for This Is Us, Billy Porter for Pose, and Steve Carell for The Morning Show.

Comer was the surprise winner last year of the best actress in a drama award for her unhinged killer Villanelle in Killing Eve. She is nominated once more, up against her co-star Sandra Oh, Colman for The Crown, Laura Linney for Ozark and Jennifer Aniston for The Morning Show.

The Emmy drama awards have, in recent years, been dominated by Game of Thrones while Veep has mostly led the way in comedy. With both those shows no longer around, pundits are predicting a much more interesting set of results.

A popular winner in the best comedy series category would be the Canadian sitcom Schitt’s Creek, about a rich family forced to move to a small town. Since it went on Netflix it has steadily and quietly become a huge feelgood hit.

The fourth and final series goes up against Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Good Place, Dead to Me, Insecure, The Kominsky Method, The Marvelous Mrs Maisel and What We Do in the Shadows.

By far the biggest number of nominations has gone to Watchmen, an adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ 1986 comic series for DC.

Damon Lindelof’s show has attracted stellar reviews with Joel Golby in the Guardian calling it an “astonishing feat of adaptation” and Variety labelling it one of the best TV seasons of the decade.

It consisted of only nine episodes and that, in all likelihood, will be that, after Lindelof said he did not wish to produce a second series. He gave his blessing for HBO to do it without him but it declined.

Among the Watchmen nominees are actors Regina King, Jovan Adepo, Louis Gossett Jr, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Jeremy Irons for his portrayal of villain Adrian Veidt.

More on this story

More on this story

  • Schitt's Creek: the five things that make it such perfect, Emmy award-winning TV

  • Succession creator Jesse Armstrong criticises Trump and Johnson at Emmys

  • Watchmen, Succession and Schitt's Creek dominate virtual Emmys

  • Emmys 2020 in pictures: Hollywood’s first major Covid-era awards show

  • Emmys 2020: Succession, Watchmen and Schitt’s Creek sweep – as it happened

  • Emmy winners 2020: the full list

  • What will this year's Emmys red carpet look like?

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