Game of Thrones, People v. OJ Simpson dominate Emmys

HBO, accustomed to being the undisputed Emmys champ in recent years, found itself in the unusual position of sharing the title Sunday night. FX Networks earned six awards at the Primetime Emmys, matching HBO's tally for the evening. FX's surge came largely on the back of anthology series “The People v. OJ Simpson: American Crime Story”, the evening's most honored show.

Counting last weekend's Creative Arts Emmys, HBO held onto the top spot, thanks to another record-breaking haul for “Game of Thrones”. The best drama series winner passed “Frasier” as the most decorated scripted series in Emmy history, with 38 wins. With 12 Emmys this year, the show tied its record from 2015 for most wins by a show in a single season.

The HBO-FX split was one of several surprises Sunday night, among them Rami Malek of “Mr. Robot” winning the award for best actor — his first nomination in the show's first season. Malek was followed by Tatiana Maslany, who won for her work on BBC America's sci-fi “Orphan Black”.

On the comedy side, change yielded to consistency, with “Veep” winning its second straight award for best comedy series, Julia Louis-Dreyfus winning her sixth straight best-actress award for her work on the show, and Jeffrey Tambor winning his second consecutive best-actor award for “Transparent”.

Toward the end of the night, FX and HBO each missed out on opportunities to jump ahead of the other with losses in key dramatic acting categories. “Game of Thrones” came up empty-handed in supporting actor and actress categories, in which it had multiple nominees. Emilia Clarke, Lena Headey, and Maisie Williams lost out to third-time winner Maggie Smith of “Downton Abbey”. Peter Dinklage and Kit Harington lost to Ben Mendelsohn of Netflix's “Bloodline”, which was canceled last week.

FX's big night began with a win for Louie Anderson for best supporting actor in a comedy series. Anderson won for his work playing the mother of Zach Galifianakis' character on FX's “Baskets”.

A string of victories for “The People v. O.J. Simpson” in the limited series and movie categories followed shortly thereafter. Sterling K Brown won for best supporting actor, besting cast-mates John Travolta and David Schwimmer, and Courtney B Vance won out over cast mate Cuba Gooding Jr. Sarah Paulson won for playing prosecutor Marcia Clark, who she brought her with her to the Emmys as a guest. Her win was her first after being nominated for five previous Emmys.

Politics took center stage with host Jimmy Kimmel joking in his opening monologue about producer Mark Burnett, the creator of “The Apprentice”, being responsible for the political success of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. Burnett, when accepting the award for best reality show, responded by joking that Kimmel and ABC had just given Trump five more minutes of free TV time.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus with her sixth consecutive best actress award (left) and the “People v. OJ Simpson” cast celebrate.

John Oliver, who has been arguably the most effective critic of Trump in late night during this election cycle, won the Emmy for variety-talk series for his HBO show “Last Week Tonight”. Comedy Central's “Key and Peele” won the first-ever award for variety-sketch series.

But the most scathing criticism of Trump came from “Transparent” creator Jill Soloway, who won the award for best director. Backstage, discussing her show's pushing of boundaries for transgender people, Soloway likened Trump's rhetoric about minority groups to that which took place in Nazi Germany.

The two wins for Amazon's “Transparent” brought transgender rights front and center at the Emmys for the second straight year.