Actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus has won her fifth straight Emmy for her role in the satirical White House comedy Veep.
|||Los Angeles - Veep star Julia Louis-Dreyfus won her fifth straight Emmy on Sunday for her role in the satirical White House comedy on a night when politics played large in the midst of an extraordinary 2016 US election campaign.
Veteran Jeffrey Tambor won best comedy actor for a second time for his role as a father who transitions to a woman in Amazon's ground-breaking Transparent.
Louis-Dreyfus, who plays the vainglorious US president Selina Meyer on HBO's Veep, apologised for what she called “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 like a sobering documentary,” she said while accepting her award.
As Americans prepare to vote in November for a new president, Veep is also expected to win the coveted comedy series category, which is announced at the end of Sunday's three-hour ceremony.
Indian-American Aziz Ansari shared his first Emmy for writing his new Netflix comedy Master of None.
Saturday Night Live comedian Kate McKinnon, who plays Democratic US presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, won supporting comedy actress, while Louie Anderson was named best supporting actor for playing the wholesome mother of Zach Galifianakis' quirky clown in the FX comedy Baskets.
Host Jimmy Kimmel opened Sunday's show with a string of jokes about Republican presidential contender and former Celebrity Apprentice host Donald Trump, and former football star OJ Simpson, whose 1995 double murder trial and acquittal was dramatised in The People vs OJ Simpson, which is expected to be a big winner on Sunday.
“If Donald Trump gets elected and he builds that wall, the first person we are throwing over it is Mark Burnett,” quipped Kimmel, addressing Burnett, the British producer who created Celebrity Apprentice.
FX's The People vs OJ Simpson: American Crime Story, went into Sunday's show with 22 nominations, including multiple acting nods, writing, and best limited series.
REUTERS