Washington [US], January 7 : American actor and comedian Nick Offerman won his first Emmy at the 75th annual Creative Arts Emmy Awards, winning Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series for his performance in 'The Last of Us', reported People on Sunday.
"Fortune presents gifts not according to the book," he said in his acceptance speech.
The 75th Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards recognised the best in artistic and technical achievement in American prime-time television programming from June 1, 2022, to May 31, 2023, as chosen by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.
The category was dominated by nominations for performances on the HBO shows, with four actors -- Murray Bartlett, Lamar Johnson, Keivonn Montreal Woodard and Offerman -- competing for the award against Succession actors James Cromwell and Arian Moayed.
Offerman also saluted Cromwell and hailed his "magnificent" partner Megan Mullally, who had earlier urged him to play Bill, a paranoid survivalist who falls in love with an unexpected trespasser named Frank (Bartlett).
In response to queries from the media, Offerman suggested there could be a whole miniseries that revolved around Bill and Frank's decades-long relationship. He said, "It could be a musical."
In "Long, Long Time," episode three, Offerman and Bartlett played two guys who, following a worldwide disaster, fell into each other's orbits and hearts, breaking hearts along the way. Skittish survivalist Bill (Offerman) and extroverted nomad Frank (Bartlett), who went from being hesitant friends to decades-long lovers, saved each other and then decided they couldn't live apart. To the accompaniment of the 1970 Linda Ronstadt song that gave the programme its name, they discovered the one remaining meaning in life in each other, reducing viewers to tears.
According to People, Bartlett is not only a double nominee this year -- he also earned a 2023 outstanding supporting actor nomination for playing real-life choreographer Nick De Noia in Hulu's limited series Welcome to Chippendales -- he's also a returning Emmy winner after taking home a 2022 supporting actor statuette for his breakout turn in season 1 of The White Lotus. This year was Offerman's fourth Emmy nomination after three shared nods with Making It co-host Amy Poehler. (His and Bartlett's costar Anna Torv also scored a guest actress nod for her three-episode arc, which included "Long, Long Time.")
The fourth and fifth episodes of The Last of Us featured heroic but doomed brothers played by Johnson and Woodard. Johnson's "The Most Wanted Man in Kansas," Henry, would stop at nothing to keep his Deaf younger brother Sam safe. He would even risk everything to assist Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey's travellers, Joel and Ellie, in escaping the relentless pursuit of a local power player named Kathleen (Melanie Lynskey, who is also competing for outstanding guest actress).
After completing his four seasons on the darkly comedic family drama, Cromwell received a third nomination for his role as the sardonic, liberal brother Ewan of Logan Roy (Brian Cox). His moving and biting impromptu eulogy for Logan, "I loved him, I suppose, and I suppose some of you did too.... Now and then darkened the skies a little. Closed men's hearts. Fed that dark flame in men, the hard mean hard-relenting flame that keeps their heart warm while another grows cold."
Throughout his illustrious career, Cromwell has received four more Emmy nominations. He was praised for his supporting performance in American Horror Story: Asylum (2012), as well as two nominations for guest acting in ER (2001) and Six Feet Under (2003). In 1999, he was nominated for a supporting Emmy for his role as publishing mogul William Randolph Hearst in the TV movie RKO 281.
Moayed, another Succession OG, was also a 2022 nomination in this category for playing agnostic venture capitalist Stewy Hosseini, whose billions continued to flow even as -- and probably because -- his allegiance to Kendall Roy (Jeremy Strong) shifted and whipped as quickly as the winds of Wall Street.