Kendrick Lamar wins Emmy for his Super Bowl halftime show

LOS ANGELES (AP):

Kendrick Lamar won his second career Emmy on Sunday night, while the 50th season of Saturday Night Live was the biggest winner with 11 on the second night of the Creative Arts Emmy Awards.

Lamar and Tony Russell won for the music direction of his Super Bowl halftime show. He won his first Emmy in 2022 as a performer at the Super Bowl halftime headlined by Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg.

Barack Obama won his third Emmy for a star-studded documentary narrator category that also included Tom Hanks, Idris Elba and David Attenborough. He won the same award in 2022 and 2023.

Neither Lamar nor Obama was present at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. Despite several high-profile winners, including Jimmy Kimmel, Conan O’Brien and Alan Cumming, the show is primarily devoted to behind-the-scenes crew members a week before TV’s stars take the same stage for the bigger Emmys ceremony.

SNL 50: The Anniversary Special, the pinnacle of a season-long celebration for the NBC sketch institution, won seven Emmys, including awards for its directing, writing, hairstyling and editing. A pop-up immersive experience tied to the special won an Emmy for emerging media and regular episodes of the show won three more.

HBO’s Pee-wee as Himself won four awards including best documentary, posthumously giving its star and subject Paul Reubens, who died in 2023, his first primetime Emmy.

Conan O’Brien won an Emmy for his travel series, Conan O’Brien Must Go, taking his career total to six. And while he didn’t get one personally for the show, Netflix’s Conan O’Brien: The Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize For American Humour beat out football halftime shows from Lamar and Beyoncé to win best variety special.

Beyoncé did win a previously announced special Emmy for the costumes on her Christmas Day Beyoncé Bowl on Netflix.

Kimmel, who has hosted both the Oscars and the Emmys multiple times, was there to accept his fourth primetime Emmy, for best host of a game show for his work on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. He thanked the show’s late original host Regis Philbin for making Millionaire a cultural phenomenon.

“Regis was the best at this,” Kimmel said backstage. “It is exciting to have this and to know that he has this same Emmy in his family’s collection somewhere.”

Jeopardy won best game show, while Cumming won best host of a reality show for The Traitors.

The two-night Creative Arts Emmys hands out nearly 100 awards in hyper-specific categories that can bring oddities. Some 47 awards are handed out on Sunday alone — but the atmosphere is loose. Swearing is allowed because of the lack of TV, as Kimmel showed when he told nominee Will Ferrell to shut up during his speech.

“This is the Emmys for the people that the people who run the Emmys don’t think should be seen on network TV,” presenter Sarah Silverman said.

The two nights are edited down into one show that will air on TV on FXX on Saturday. The following day, the 77th Primetime Emmy Awards, hosted by Nate Bargatze, will air live on CBS.