Former President Barack Obama was among the winners Sunday evening as the two-night 2022-23 Creative Arts Emmy Awards concluded with awards presented in 49 categories of reality, variety, documentary, nonfiction and animated programming and game shows.
Obama won for best narrator for “Working: What We Do All Day,” a four-part Netflix documentary series exploring the ways people find meaning in their work.
The other nominees are Mahershala Ali for the Netflix documentary series on chimpanzees “Chimp Empire”; Angela Bassett for the Prime Video documentary “Good Night Oppy” on the Mars rover Opportunity; Morgan Freeman for the Netflix nature documentary, “Our Universe”; and Pedro Pascal for the CNN documentary on the region encompassing the southern end of South America, “Patagonia: Life on the Edge of the World.”
Bassett is a three-time nominee in the category first presented in 2014 and Freeman a two-time nominee, but neither has won.
This is the second consecutive season Obama was the winner in the category. He won in the category for the 2021-22 season for the five-part Netflix documentary series, “Our Great National Parks.”
Obama is the fourth multiple winner of the award, joining three-time winners David Attenborough and Keith David and two-time winner Jeremy Irons.
Obama, his wife Michelle and Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, were among the executive producers of “Working: What We Do All Day,” which follows individuals at all levels of the workforce — from service jobs to CEOs in home care, tech, and hospitality.
As a college student, Obama was inspired by Studs Terkel’s 1974 book “Working,” which revolutionized the conversation around work by asking ordinary people what they did all day, according to Netflix, which billed the documentary as bringing that idea “into the modern world by offering intimate, behind-the-scenes portraits of people’s lives and giving viewers a new understanding of and appreciation for the jobs they do each day.”
Michelle Obama was also among Sunday’s nominees as an executive producer of the Netflix special of her wide-ranging conversation with Oprah Winfrey “The Light We Carry: Michelle Obama & Oprah Winfrey,” which was nominated for outstanding hosted nonfiction series or special.
The CNN travel and food series, “Stanley Tucci: Searching For Italy,” was the winner for the third consecutive season.
The other nominees were Netflix’s “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman and Volodymyr Zelensky”; the Hulu travel and food documentary television series, “Taste the Nation with Padma Lakshmi”; and the CNN documentary series, “United Shades Of America with W. Kamau Bell.”
The nomination was the first for Michelle Obama.
Neither Obama attended the ceremony at the Peacock Theater at L.A. Live.
Game show categories were included in the Creative Arts Emmys for the first time, moving from the Daytime Emmys under an agreement announced in 2022 between the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, which conducts the Primetime Emmys, and the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, which conducts the Daytime Emmys, to award many programming categories by genre instead of daypart.
“Jeopardy!” won for outstanding game show after winning each of the final three times the award was presented at the Daytime Emmys and a record 19 times since it was revived in 1984. The other nominees were “Family Feud”; “The Price Is Right”; “That’s My Jam”; and “Wheel Of Fortune.”
“Password” host Keke Palmer won for outstanding game show host. A Black woman had never won in the category when it was presented at the Daytime Emmys from 1974-2022. There were two Black winners — Steve Harvey won in 2014, 2017 and 2022 for “Family Feud” and Wayne Brady won in 2018 for “Let’s Make a Deal.”
The female winners were Betty White, who won in 1983 for “Just Men!” and Meredith Vieira for “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” in 2005 and 2009.
Harvey was also among Sunday’s nominees, along with Pat Sajak of “Wheel of Fortune,” a three-time winner, most recently in 1998, and 21-time nominee; and “Jeopardy!” hosts Mayim Bialik and Ken Jennings.
RuPaul won for the eighth consecutive season as host for a reality or competition program. The host of MTV’s “RuPaul’s Drag Race” has won each time he has been nominated.
RuPaul’s eight wins are the most in the category established in 2008. “Survivor’s” Jeff Probst is second with four.
The other nominees were Bobby Berk, Karamo Brown, Tan France, Antoni Porowski and Jonathan Van Ness from the Netflix makeover series “Queer Eye”; Nicole Byer of the Netflix baking series, “Nailed It!”; Padma Lakshmi, from the Bravo cooking competition “Top Chef”; and Amy Poehler and Maya Rudolph of the second-season Peacock baking series “Baking It.”
Of the five individuals or teams nominated, only Poehler and Rudolph were not among the nominees when the award was last presented in 2022.
Rudolph won for the third time four seasons for outstanding character voice-over performance for supplying the voice of Connie the Hormone Monstress on the Netflix adult animated coming-of-age comedy “Big Mouth.” She won in 2020 and 2021 and was also nominated in 2022.
Julie Andrews was nominated for the third consecutive season for providing the voice of the anonymous newsletter columnist Lady Whistledown on Netflix’s steamy alternate history period drama “Bridgerton.”
Alex Borstein, who supplies the voice of Lois Griffin in the Fox animated comedy “Family Guy” was also nominated for the fourth time. She won in 2018.
Wanda Sykes received her second nomination of supplying the voice of Gladys on the Comedy Central adult puppet show “Crank Yankers.”
The other nominees were both first-time nominees in the category — Mel Brooks for narrating Hulu’s “History of the World, Part II,” and Ali Wong for supplying the voice of Bertie the song thrush in the canceled Adult Swim animated comedy, “Tuca & Bertie.”
Wong did receive an award Sunday, winning the Golden Globe for best female actor — limited series, anthology series or television motion picture for her portrayal of a small business owner involved in a road-range incident on the Netflix comedy-drama limited series “Beef.”
Fox’s “The Simpsons” won for outstanding animated series for the first time since 2019 and 12th time, adding to its record. “South Park” is second with five.
The other nominees were Adult Swim’s “Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal” and “Rick and Morty”; Fox’s “Bob’s Burgers” and Netflix’s “Entergalactic.”
Other program winners were NBC’s “Carol Burnett: 90 Years of Laughter + Love” (outstanding variety special pre-recorded); “Queer Eye” (for outstanding structured reality program); FX’s look at the Welsh soccer team owned by Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney “Welcome to Wrexham” (outstanding unstructured reality program); Apple TV+’s “Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie” (outstanding documentary or nonfiction special); Hulu’s documentary miniseries on slavery in the United States, “The 1619 Project” (outstanding documentary or nonfiction series); the Netflix sketch comedy series “I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson” (outstanding short form comedy, drama or variety series); HBO Max’s “Succession: Controlling the Narrative” (outstanding short form nonfiction or reality series); and Apple TV+’s “For All Mankind Season 3 Experience,” (outstanding emerging media program).
“Welcome to Wrexham” was the night’s top winner with five awards, also winning for outstanding cinematography for a reality program; outstanding directing for a reality program; outstanding picture editing for an unstructured reality program; and outstanding sound mixing for a reality program (single or multicamera).
The Creative Arts Emmy Awards began Saturday with awards for scripted programming presented in 49 categories, mainly in various technical categories, including hairstyling, makeup, costuming, production design, picture editing, sound editing, sound mixing and visual effects, but also including four guest acting categories.
An edited presentation of the two nights of the Creative Arts Emmys will air Saturday at 8 p.m. on FXX and be available on Hulu next Sunday.
Awards in the top 25 categories in comedy, drama, competition, limited, variety sketch and talk series and the Governors Award will be presented at the 75th Primetime Emmy Awards on Jan. 15, also at the Peacock Theater. Programming had to initially be broadcast or streamed between June 1, 2022-May 31, 2023 to be eligible.
All three ceremonies were scheduled for September but postponed because of the strikes by the Writers Guild of America and Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.