‘Veep’s Julia Louis-Dreyfus Wins Fifth Emmy In A Row, Jokes About Political Climate, Dedicates Award To Father
Veep‘s Julia Louis-Dreyfus scored her fifth straight Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series win tonight, tying Candice Bergen and Don Knotts for the most wins by a performer for the same role in the same show. She’s also now notched up six total wins for Lead Actress including one for The New Adventures Of Old Christine, and one for Supporting Actress on Seinfeld in 1996 to take the total to seven and tying her with Allison Janney and Mary Tyler Moore for trophies to a female performer. Cloris Leachman still leads with eight.
Her fifth Veep win as Selina Meyer comes for a season that saw a change in showrunner as creator Armando Iannucci departed (amicably) at the end of the fourth and Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm alum David Mandel took his place. Louis-Dreyfus told Deadline earlier this year that she “definitely wanted to continue. I did not want to walk away from this.”
Tonight, she thanked Mandel “for letting me trick him into running the show.”
She also took the opportunity to “personally apologize for the current political climate. I think that Veep has torn down the wall between comedy and politics. Our show started out as a political satire, but it now feels more like a sobering documentary so I certainly do promise to rebuild that wall and make Mexico pay for it.”
The visibly emotional Louis-Dreyfus wrapped up the speech by thanking her father, William Louis-Dreyfus, who passed away on Friday. As she fought back tears, she said, “I’m so glad he liked Veep because his opinion was the one that really mattered.”
In total, Louis-Dreyfus has actually won eight statues which includes one as exec producer on Outstanding Comedy Series winner Veep last year. She could make it nine later this evening with the show again in that race.
Also nominated in the category tonight were Laurie Metcalf (Getting On), Tracee Ellis Ross (Black-ish), Ellie Kemper (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt), Lily Tomlin (Grace And Frankie) and Amy Schumer (Inside Amy Schumer).
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