Weird Al and Tim Robinson both win big at the Creative Arts Emmys

There were no mid-budget, cult favorite stars shining in the Hollywood sky on Saturday night—because they were all at the Creative Arts Emmys, getting the kinds of awards that the award show’s Primetime bigger sibling is just too damn scared to hand out. Where else but the CA Emmys can nerds like us get to see folks like Weird Al Yankovic, the cast and crew of a high-profile video game adaptation, and both leads from Comedy Central’s late, lamented Detroiters get their plaudits? Truly, the ceremony’s first night (with the second scheduled to run tonight, neck and neck with the Golden Globes) was a paradise for weirdos.

Including Yankovic, who showed up to pick up the Outstanding Television Movie award for his 2023 “biopic” Weird: The Al Yankovic Story. (Which also won for Outstanding Music Composition For A Limited Or Anthology Series, Movie Or Special (Original Dramatic Score), in what might legitimately be the greatest critical night in the whole history of The Roku Channel.) Among other things, that means Yankovic is now fully halfway to EGOT after 6 Grammy wins across his long career; once the Oscars get their act together and issue a retroactive Best Song award to 1996's theme from Spy Hard, he’ll be right on the verge of greatness.

Meanwhile, the Emmys also acknowledged both Sam Richardson and Tim Robinson, with the former getting the nod for Guest Actor In A Comedy Series for Ted Lasso (Judith Light winning the corresponding award for Guest Actress for Poker Face), while Robinson was acknowledged as Outstanding Actor In A Short Form Comedy Or Drama Series, beating out Kevin Hart and Ben Schwartz, both for Die Hart 2. This is us editorializing massively, of course, but what a joy it is to see Robinson’s hyper-committed, flop-sweat-heavy performances in his sketch comedy series I Think You Should Leave get acknowledged like this; he and long-time friend Richardson took a photo together with their statues that lit up our Detroiters-loving hearts.

Elsewhere, the big winner of the night was HBO’s The Last Of Us, which won 8 awards, including for prosthetics, credits sequence, sound mixing, special visual effects, sound editing, and picture editing. (It also pulled down both Outstanding Guest Actor/Actress awards, netting Storm Reid and Nick Offerman their first Emmy wins each.) The Bear, Wednesday, and The White Lotus all pulled down four awards apiece, while Netflix’s Beef took in 3. Oh, and because the Creative Arts Emmys are way out ahead of the Oscars in terms of acknowledging stunt work: Barry, The Boys, and The Mandalorian all took home awards for stunt coordination or performance in their individual categories.