Julie Walters and Ben Whishaw took the top acting awards as British TV productions won five International Emmys on a night that saw Brazil get its first ever for a Bollywood-style telenovela.
The highlight of Monday night’s 37th International Emmy Awards Gala came when ABC’s Barbara Walters presented the honorary Founders Award to British TV personality David Frost.
“I’m not exactly chopped liver when it comes to doing interviews,” Walters told the audience at the awards ceremony at the Hilton New York Hotel. “But in my opinion and the opinion of millions who have watched and listened to him for so many years, David is the best interviewer there is and he makes it look so easy.”
PHOTO: EPA
Presenter Edie Falco, star of The Sopranos, accepted the best actress award on behalf of Julie Walters, who was off on location playing the role of Molly Weasley in the next Harry Potter film.
Walters won the Emmy for her role in the real-life BBC drama A Short Stay in Switzerland, in which she portrays a British doctor who is diagnosed with an incurable neurological disease and seeks assisted suicide in a Zurich clinic.
Whishaw also missed the awards ceremony, which was hosted by British TV presenter Graham Norton, because he had just opened in a new play in London. He got the best actor Emmy for the five-part BBC thriller Criminal Justice about a young man accused of murdering a woman after a drunken, drug-filled night out, though he is unable to remember what happened.
PHOTO: EPA
While Britain won five of the 10 categories, the awards were spread out among more countries compared to previous years. The International Emmys honor excellence in TV programming outside the US.
Brazil took home its first-ever Emmy for India: A Love Story in the telenovela category. The TV Globo production shot on location at the Taj Mahal and other scenic Indian locales focuses on an upper caste woman’s forbidden romance with an “untouchable” man.
Denmark’s The Protectors about a special unit within Denmark’s intelligence service was chosen the best drama series, while Japan’s Hoshi Shinichi’s Short Shorts, based on the late writer’s offbeat tales, was selected as best comedy.
The Netherlands won the non-scripted entertainment category for The Phone, in which contestants who answer a ringing phone in a public place get plunged into a spy movie plot to win prizes.
The TV movie/mini-series award went to Germany’s The Wolves of Berlin, which tells the story of a youth gang that comes together in the ruins of post-war Berlin in 1948 up through the fall of the Wall in 1989.
Other British winners included Dustbin Baby, about an adopted teenager, for children and young people’s programming; The Ascent of Money, a history of world finance by economic historian Niall Ferguson, for best documentary; and The Mona Lisa Curse, with Australian critic Robert Hughes reflections on contemporary art, for arts programing.
“Forget about the prices, forget about what Sotheby’s and Christie’s have been doing to our perception of art, just remember what the serious art is and why if we love it we do love it,” said Hughes, accepting his award.
Former British prime minister Tony Blair appeared on videotape to honor Frost, joking that one thing they share in common is being played by actor Michael Sheen in films (the Oscar-nominated The Queen and Frost/Nixon) although “personally I think he was better as you.”
“This night it’s an occasion for us to look back and to thank you for what you’ve done not just for Britain and British broadcasting but for broadcasting around the world,” Blair said.
Barbara Walters said Frost holds the unique distinction of having interviewed seven US presidents as well as seven British prime ministers during a career in which he’s hosted and produced his own shows for more than 40 years, including the current Frost Over the World for al-Jazeera English.
In his remarks, Frost displayed the same wit that gained him prominence on both sides of the Atlantic in the early 1960s as host of the groundbreaking BBC satirical program That Was The Week That Was.
“Those were very different days back then,” the 70-year-old Frost said. “Digital television just meant switching on your set with your finger and if you had a 3.5-inch floppy that was something you kept very quiet about.”
Former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger, who is German-born, presented the honorary Directorate Award to Markus Schachter for his leadership of Germany’s ZDF television network.
Kissinger said, as a refugee from Nazi Germany and a Cold War diplomat, he never expected that he would witness a celebration of reconciliation and unification like this month’s 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
He praised ZDF for introducing the people of communist East Germany to Western values and seeding “the eventual collapse of the Wall.”
A beauty queen who pulled out of the Miss South Africa competition when her nationality was questioned has said she wants to relocate to Nigeria, after coming second in the Miss Universe pageant while representing the West African country. Chidimma Adetshina, whose father is Nigerian, was crowned Miss Universe Africa and Oceania and was runner-up to Denmark’s Victoria Kjar Theilvig in Mexico on Saturday night. The 23-year-old law student withdrew from the Miss South Africa competition in August, saying that she needed to protect herself and her family after the government alleged that her mother had stolen the identity of a South
BELT-TIGHTENING: Chinese investments in Cambodia are projected to drop to US$35 million in 2026 from more than US$420 million in 2021 At a ceremony in August, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet knelt to receive blessings from saffron-robed monks as fireworks and balloons heralded the breaking of ground for a canal he hoped would transform his country’s economic fortunes. Addressing hundreds of people waving the Cambodian flag, Hun Manet said China would contribute 49 percent to the funding of the Funan Techo Canal that would link the Mekong River to the Gulf of Thailand and reduce Cambodia’s shipping reliance on Vietnam. Cambodia’s government estimates the strategic, if contentious, infrastructure project would cost US$1.7 billion, nearly 4 percent of the nation’s annual GDP. However, months later,
‘HARD-HEADED’: Some people did not evacuate to protect their property or because they were skeptical of the warnings, a disaster agency official said Typhoon Man-yi yesterday slammed into the Philippines’ most populous island, with the national weather service warning of flooding, landslides and huge waves as the storm sweeps across the archipelago nation. Man-yi was still packing maximum sustained winds of 185kph after making its first landfall late on Saturday on lightly populated Catanduanes island. More than 1.2 million people fled their homes ahead of Man-yi as the weather forecaster warned of a “life-threatening” effect from the powerful storm, which follows an unusual streak of violent weather. Man-yi uprooted trees, brought down power lines and smashed flimsy houses to pieces after hitting Catanduanes in the typhoon-prone
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un renewed his call for a “limitless” expansion of his military nuclear program to counter US-led threats in comments reported yesterday that were his first direct criticism toward Washington since US president-elect Donald Trump’s electoral victory on Oct. 6. At a conference with army officials on Friday, Kim condemned the US for updating its nuclear deterrence strategies with South Korea and solidifying three-way military cooperation involving Japan, which he portrayed as an “Asian NATO” that was escalating tensions and instability in the region. Kim also criticized the US over its support of Ukraine against a prolonged Russian invasion.
RSS