Creative Arts Emmy Winners Announced

HBO topped the night at the 2012 Creative Arts Emmy Awards with 17 golden statuettes. The premium cable network was followed by CBS, with 13 Emmys, and PBS with 11.

Leading the recipients of multiple awards was the HBO drama Game of Thrones, with six Emmys. Based on A Song of Fire and Ice, a series of medieval-era fantasy novels by author George R.R. Martin, Game of Thrones earned a total of 11 Emmy nominations in this, its second season.

Following Game of Thrones, with four Emmys each, were Discovery’s Frozen Planet, PBS’s Great Expectations (Masterpiece) and NBC’s Saturday Night Live.

The ceremony was held at NOKIA Theatre L.A. LIVE in downtown Los Angeles. An edited version of the event will air as a special on Saturday, September 22, at 8:00 p.m. (ET/PT), on ReelzChannel.

The awards were presented by performers from more than a dozen series and specials, joined by their show-runners or executive producers.

In order of appearance, they were:

Lisa Kudrow and Dan Bucatinsky (Web Therapy), Mark Margolis and Vince Gilligan (Breaking Bad), Jennifer Morrison, Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis (Once Upon a Time), Emily Deschanel and Hart Hanson (Bones), Mary Murphy and Nigel Lythgoe (So You Think You Can Dance), Billy Gardell and Mark Roberts (Mike and Molly), Morena Baccarin and Howard Gordon (Homeland), Tom Kenny and Dane Boedigheimer (Annoying Orange), Neil Patrick Harris (How I Met Your Mother), Silas Weir Mitchell and Jim Kouf (Grimm), Mark Gardner, David Carbonara and Christina Hendricks (Mad Men).

Next came Chris O’Donnell and Shane Brennan (NCIS: Los Angeles), Sig Hansen and Thom Beers (Deadliest Catch), Frances Conroy and Ryan Murphy (American Horror Story), Johnny Galecki and Bill Prady (The Big Bang Theory), Padma Lakshmi, Dan Cutforth and Jane Lipsitz (Top Chef), LL Cool J and Ken Ehrlich (The Grammy Awards), 2012 Summer Olympics gold medalist Allyson Felix and David Neal (2010 Winter Olympics), Martha Plimpton and Greg Garcia (Raising Hope) and Kathy Griffin (Kathy).

The show also featured the first In Memoriam segment at a Creative Arts Emmys ceremony, a montage that included dozens of camera operators, picture editors, art directors and many other crafts, as well as performers with Creative Arts provenance.

The latter included the late Kathryn Joosten, who won two Emmys as a guest actress on Desperate Housewives at previous Creative Arts shows. She is nominated posthumously this year for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series, also for Desperate Housewives. That award will be given at next Sunday's Primetime Emmys ceremony.

The collaborative nature of television, which was stressed throughout the night, is the essence of the Creative Arts Emmys, which this year honored excellence in more than 70 categories. Much of the ceremony is devoted to recognizing members of the production team whose expertise is vital to television production, including such disciplines as casting, cinematography, picture editing, sound editing and mixing, technical direction, special visual effects,hairstyling, makeup, music, art direction, stunts and more.

In addition, awards are given for animation, commercials, nonfiction series, reality series and other programming, as well as four acting categories.

Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series went to Martha Plimpton for CBS’s The Good Wife; Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series went to Kathy Bates for CBS’s Two and a Half Men; Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series went to Jeremy Davies for FX’s Justified; and Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series went to Jimmy Fallon for NBC’s Saturday Night Live.

Two special honors were also given: the Governors Award and the Syd Cassyd Founders Award.