Star Wars Wins Two Emmys

Even though Hollywood awards are mostly pointless exercises, it can still mean something if you are recognized for your efforts, especially if you are not in the spotlight most of the time. The big winner this year was the drama series “Succession” which beat Andor, which was also nominated in the “Outstanding Drama Series” category. Some joker at Lucasfilm also entered Obi-Wan Kenobi in the “Outstanding Limited Or Anthology Series” category, of course it did not win, a series titled “Beef” won instead.

But Star Wars did win two Emmys last night and one award went to someone who is definitely not in the spotlight most of the time!  Click through for all the details!

Lateef Crowder now has an Emmy, pictured here on set with director Bryce Dallas Howard in a season 1 episode, Howard actually never worked even once with Pedro Pascal when she filmed that episode and Crowder and his colleague Brandon Wayne were the men in the armor.

The Mandalorian won an Emmy for “Outstanding Stunt Performance” for the episode “The Return” (the season 3 finale where the Mandalorians defeat the Imperial Remnant and seize control of Mandalore). The Emmy was specifically awarded to Lateef Crowder and Ryan Ryusaki, both are stunt performers, and then assistant directors (i.e. the ones who work out all the details of the stunt performance) Paul Darnell and J.J. Dashnam.

While certainly one of the minor categories, it is still nice to see that the stunt work was awarded an Emmy, especially for something like The Mandalorian where the two stunt performers for Din Djarin do all the heavy lifting, Pascal was never even on set in season 3. You may wonder why Crowder won an Emmy but not Brandon Wayne, when both of them are basically “The Mandalorian” on set? This is easy to explain: Wayne doesn’t do any actual stunts, he is the performance double, i.e. he does all the (physical) acting. It is Lateef Crowder who does all the actual stunt work, so when Din gets into a fight Lateef will take over from Brandon. Ryan Ryusaki is the other stunt performer (he probably was the man in Moff Gideon’s armor), he was used for all eight episodes of season 3. The other two guys are assistant directors who will work out all the details of the stunt performance, which is something the main director will usually not directly be involved with, since you need experts to work out all the details of fight choreography.

So congratulations to Lateef, Ryan and the two assistant directors! I think this is a well deserved award, especially since stunt performers often fly under the radar.

The other Emmy was awarded to the Star Wars Visions episode “Screecher’s Reach” for “Outstanding Individual Achievement In Animation”. This was the season 2 episode about a Sith Banshee in a cave and a girl (of course a girl) passing the trial in the cave, she then gets taken on as an apprentice by what is implied to be a Sith.

Screecher’s Reach won an Emmy for Best Production Design

Congratulations to Irish animation studio Cartoon Saloon! Overall I felt that season 2 of Visions was a rather weak affair and even Screecher’s Reach did not overly impress me with its story, the best season 2 episode in my opinion was the Korean short about a young woman and a young male Jedi trying to destroy a giant Sith statue. But this episode was not nominated for an Emmy.

Star Wars was nominated in various other categories, but lost to competitors.

As mentioned, Andor was nominated for “Outstanding Drama Series”, and someone with a sense of humour felt it’s a good idea to nominate Obi-Wan Kenobi for “Outstanding Limited Or Anthology Series”. Kenobi was nominated for a few other things: “Outstanding Picture Editing For A Limited Or Anthology Series” (seriously???), “Outstanding Sound Editing”, “Outstanding Sound Mixing” (always in the Limited Series category). Andor was also nominated for “Outstanding Music Composition”, “Outstanding Original Main Title Theme Music”, “Outstanding Sound Editing”, “Outstanding Special Visual Effects”, “Outstanding Directing”, “Outstanding Writing” and “Outstanding Cinematography”. But lost against the competition.

In my opinion Andor at least deserves awards for the cinematography and set/production design. But what do I know. I am not one of the 1,000 jurors selected by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences who vote on the winners.

Do you still care about who wins a Hollywood award like an Emmy, a Golden Globe or an Oscar?

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